860216 - Firefox does not display the redirect target URL when downloading a file

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[Strainu]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:20.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/20.0
Build ID: 20130326150557

Steps to reproduce:

I google searched for "borderou posta" (https://www.google.ro/search?q=borderou+posta&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:ro:official&client=firefox-a) and clicked on the first result


Actual results:

The first result is a downloadable file (http://www.posta-romana.ro/dms/posta-romana/pdf-si-word/produse-si-servicii/personal/Marfuri/coletarie-anuntata/Borderou-corespondenta/Borderou%20corespondenta.pdf). When clicking on it, Firefox displays the Google redirect URL (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CC4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.posta-romana.ro%2Fdms%2Fposta-romana%2Fpdf-si-word%2Fproduse-si-servicii%2Fpersonal%2FMarfuri%2Fcoletarie-anuntata%2FBorderou-corespondenta%2FBorderou%2520corespondenta.pdf&ei=50dlUdbyKuj00QHfloCYDQ&usg=AFQjCNEkn1Y9PSQo8mjbFiAZbPb0Y-acJQ&sig2=7sWYhpmQGYUI_jS4zDB0Gw&bvm=bv.44990110,d.dmQ), then offers to open or save the file.


Expected results:

Firefox should have displayed the actual URL of the file, so it can be copied or otherwise reused.

Comment 1

[Jesper Hansen]

Google changes its result links when clicking them.
You can easily verify this by right clicking then hovering the link again.

Comment 2

[Strainu]

Jesper, I'm not sure I understand how is that preventing you from fixing my bug. It doesn't matter what the Google URL is, the response itself is always a javascript that redirect to the actual URL of the page.

If I search for "Firefox" and I click on the first result, the address bar will contain for a few seconds the google URL, that it will change to "https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/". Why can't this happen for downloadable files, like movies or pdfs?

Comment 3

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Do you mean the URL is wrong in the file save as window ?

The server from the first file is currently down or is blocking my IP.
The second link called "Borderou recomandate" (a xls file) shows the expected domain in the save as window.

Do you get the same result in the firefox safemode ?
- http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode

Comment 4

[Strainu]

No, the URL is wrong in the address bar of the tab used to open the file. I often use the address bar to copy the URLs of such files.

The behavior is reproducible in safe mode.

Comment 5

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Ah, you mean the URL bar ! 
That is a security feature and therefore by design.
The URL bar contains the URL of the page that is currently rendered and the address bar is a secured area of the browser.

Example:
You trick users to load http://example.org/ and on the page you start a download of a very small file the already exists on http://paypal.com. Many user will not notice the download or ignore it and they now think that they are on http://paypal.com but they are on http://example.com. You see, it would be dangerous to show the target URL in the address bar in case of a download.