995003 - Firefox launches Flash Player plugin for Flash at web URLs, but tries to download local (file:// URLs) Flash instead of executing it.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect)

Description

[zen75502]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:28.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/28.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20140314220517

Steps to reproduce:

I attempted to run a Shockwave Flash file in-browser using a file:// URL in the current official Mozilla Firefox x86-64 version 28 binary, running on a Debian GNU/Linux jessie (testing) system. I have version 11.2 r202 of the Flash player installed.


Actual results:

Firefox presented me with the Opening (filename) dialog box that asks whether I want to Open the file in an external viewer or Save the file to my Downloads directory, as if I had accessed a file type Firefox doesn't know how to handle.

Disabling all of my Extensions had no effect on this misbehaviour.


Expected results:

Firefox should have activated the Flash plugin to play the SWF file, in the same way that it does when I access an SWF file via an http or https URL, and in the same way that the Debian wheezy (stable) build of Iceweasel does.

Comment 1

[Francesca Ciceri [:madamezou]]

[bugday-20140414]

Hi, 

thanks for taking time to report a problem!

I was able to reproduce this behavior with Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/31.0 ID:20140409030203 CSet: 5811efc11011 on Debian Sid with Shockwave Flash 11.2 r202. I'm not sure if this is done by design or not, though.

My about:preferences Application tab correctly associate the swf format with Shockwave Flash plugin.
If that can be of use, Chromium Version 33.0.1750.152 Debian jessie/sid (256984) as well cannot open a swf local file in-browser without asking first for the application to use.

Also: Firefox does open directly without asking local video files of other formats, for instance .webm

Component → File Handling

Comment 2

[zen75502]

Still present in Firefox 29.

Comment 3

[zen75502]

While eagerly awaiting a proper fix, I've identified a tolerable workaround:

For each SWF file you want to run locally, write a stub HTML file like the following:

<object height="AAA" width="BBB">
<embed src="file:///local/path/to/file.swf" height="AAA" width="BBB">
</embed>
</object>

(replacing AAA and BBB with the dimensions you want it to have) and load the stub HTML file instead of the SWF file.

Comment 4

[u597032]

Adobe Flash is no longer supported.