does not "do this automatically from now on"

paul m kienitz · Post by **paul m kienitz** » February 18th, 2007, 2:59 am

How come when I click on a media file, and select Open and then "Do this automatically for files like this from now on", it often doesn't? For some types it never stops asking with the same dialog.

And I tried clearing stuff out of the download types list...

the-edmeister · Post by **the-edmeister** » February 19th, 2007, 10:31 pm

1. That is prevalent with WMV file types.
2. On other file types is there a MIME-type sen with the file?

What Firefox does with files is dependent on their content type rather than their extension. Likely the web server is sending them as application/octet-stream, which means "I don't know what this is, you'd better just download it".

Ed

paul m kienitz · Post by **paul m kienitz** » February 19th, 2007, 11:02 pm

Any workaround?

ethsen · Post by **ethsen** » February 22nd, 2007, 2:28 pm

I have this problem with all file types. It started with Firefox 1.5.x and is still there with 2.0.x. If I go back to version 1.0.x this option works properly. Maybe we'll see a fix in 3.0.

paul m kienitz · Post by **paul m kienitz** » February 22nd, 2007, 5:14 pm

the-edmeister wrote:What Firefox does with files is dependent on their content type rather than their extension. Likely the web server is sending them as application/octet-stream, which means "I don't know what this is, you'd better just download it".

That certainly makes one wonder why the list you can edit is of file extensions. And you'd think that, if the stuff is stored by extension, it would at least glance at the extension if it couldn't get anything from the mime type.

old FatJohn · Post by **old FatJohn** » February 22nd, 2007, 5:52 pm

Can you give us an example of a file you see this behaviour with. (The reason the list is by extension is because joe user has never heard about some MIME types. But joe user might know at least a few of the most prominent extensions...)

paul m kienitz · Post by **paul m kienitz** » February 23rd, 2007, 5:48 pm

as the-edmeister said, I notice it most with WMV.

Alice · Post by **Alice** » February 23rd, 2007, 8:43 pm

There was a whole long discussion on this awhile back on the Firefox Support forum:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=356337 Open with "do this automatically" doesnt remember
...This is copied from my page 3 post to that thread:

That WMV example falls under the category of text/plain files being interpreted as or "likely to be" another MIME type. Explanation here:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Opening_files ... web_server
Sometimes a misconfigured web server will send a file with an inappropriate MIME type and, instead of the file automatically opening with the browser plugin, an "Opening" dialog box will appear, asking you to either save the file or open it with a chosen external application. This may happen with .wmv (Windows Media Video) files sent as "text/plain" instead of the correct "video/x-ms-wmv" MIME type (see bug 250914, probably related to the fix for bug 220807, outlined here).

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=250914
Clicking on WMV file opens What should Firefox do? dialog
Comment #4 [reply] Matthias Versen (matti) 2005-11-02 06:14:38 PST

The website sends the wmv file with a wrong mime-Type (text/plain) and Firefox
would display the file as text (!) but we added a workaround that firefox
displays the File save as dialog instead.

It's a bug that the "Do this automatically..." is not greyed but not the other
things.
We have a bug for duping but I can't find it at the moment.

heat84 · Post by **heat84** » July 30th, 2007, 3:49 am

ethsen wrote:I have this problem with all file types. It started with Firefox 1.5.x and is still there with 2.0.x. If I go back to version 1.0.x this option works properly. Maybe we'll see a fix in 3.0.

I have this problem with most if not all file types too. Why do the developers refuse to address the problem. It would seem all they would have to do is compare the pre FF 1.5 download behavior programming to the download behavior proamming in any version thereafter to see where the error is. It wouldn't surprise me if it was just a simple typo. If had any programming knowledge, I'd be happy to do it myself. If FF 1.5 is in fact when it started, which I can't say for sure but sounds about right.

I also still have the problem when I click in a download link, a blank tab opens and FF thinks is loading a page when its actually downloading a file. The file downloads properly when I do "Save link as".

I'm not sure which version it started, but ever since, downloading with FF isn't fun.

malliz · Post by **malliz** » July 30th, 2007, 3:56 am

More likely to be some sort of profile corruption

schapel · Post by **schapel** » July 30th, 2007, 5:56 am

heat84 wrote:I have this problem with most if not all file types too. Why do the developers refuse to address the problem.?

Because you need to write a bug report. Collect information about the problem here, then submit a bug report. Here are some tidbits you can collect:

What operating system are you using?
Does the problem occur with a new profile?
Does it occur in nightly trunk builds?
What is a URL that demonstrates the problem?
What is the <a href="http://wiki.mozilla.org/MozillaQualityAssurance:Triage#How_to_Help_with_Regressions_--_Finding_Regression_Windows">regression window</a> of the problem?

Alice · Post by **Alice** » July 30th, 2007, 5:57 am

The Firefox "standard diagnostic" includes steps to rule out profile issues:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox

schapel · Post by **schapel** » July 30th, 2007, 7:40 am

There are some bug reports on the issue already:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=382987
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=347843
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=331259
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=285976
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=250914

I would still suggest collecting information here first before commenting in those bug reports. There are different issues discussed in the different bug reports, and we should put the information into the correct bug report so as not to further confuse the issue.

heat84 · Post by **heat84** » July 31st, 2007, 4:42 pm

My computer here at school has FF 2.0 and a URL that wasn't downloading properly at home downloads properly here. I guess I have some investigating to do when I get home.

I haven't been able to test the "Do This Automatically" problem though.

heat84 · Post by **heat84** » August 2nd, 2007, 2:13 pm

I later was able to test "Do This Automatically" at school and FF there still wouldn't open a torrent automatically with µtorrent. I should probably try more file extensions though.

When I got home, I made a new FF profile and tried my test URL and it still wasn't working properly. So I uninstalled Firefox and deleted all folders with the name Mozilla in them, then reinstalled FF. My test URL finally worked with a new profile. So what does that indicate about what the problem is. The installation of FF was somehow corrupted and not my profile. Since the Extensions and Plugins folders are in the Program Files/Mozilla Firefox folder, does that mean they would effect a new profile?

The "Do This Automatically" problem still exists.