Open file with external application broken

[Michael]

System Kubuntu 8.04 beta, upgraded from 7.10 over the internet.
When I click on i.e. a link to a PDF file in Firefox, I am offered a choice of "open with Firefox 3.0b4" (no other applications listed in the menu) or "save file" (the default choice). When I drop down the "open with" menu, select "other..." and press "Cancel" in the dialogue box which appears, "open with Firefox 3.0b4" changes to "open with kpdf (default)".

[Michael (michaeljt)]

A fresh installation of Kubuntu 8.04 beta in a VirtualBox VM with Firefox 3.0 beta added produces the same result, except that the choice "open with Firefox 3.0b4" is replaced with "open with <empty entry>".

[Ryan Sinn (ryan-sinn)]

I have a similar issue since Firefox3 Beta 4...

This is the dialog I get for PDFs...

I've deleted the entire .mozilla directory and that didn't change the file open / save dialog for PDFs.

[Jeroen Tietema (jtietema)]

I have the same issue. Opening a PDF firefox will suggest to open it with firefox. Strangely when I chose other and in the file selection chose cancel, the correct program is displayed as default option (in my case okular).

I upgraded from Kubuntu 7.10 to Kubuntu 8.04 RC.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

so you are all running kde? can you confirm that the right application appears when pressing cancel - as reported by Jeroen?

[Ryan Sinn (ryan-sinn)]

No applications appear when pressing cancel -- the Save Dialog goes away and the file is not saved to my local computer.

I am not running KDE as clearly shown by the screenshot of the dialog I attached to my previous comment. Standard Ubuntu (Gnome) desktop here.

[Michael (michaeljt)]

I am running KDE. I can confirm that the right application appears when pressing cancel (as I reported initially).

[Forest (foresto)]

This seems related to bug 220504.

[Forest (foresto)]

I have the same problem, but with firefox 3.0b5 and xfce (xubuntu).
I first encountered it with a profile that was upgraded from firefox 2, but creating a fresh profile didn't help.
Pressing cancel simply cancels the download; no application or dialog appears afterward.

(Removing "incomplete" status, since the open questions have been answered.)

[nandhp (nandhp)]

I can confirm this on GNOME, Firefox 3.0b4, gutsy-backports.

If I do Open With -> Other -> Cancel, the selected application does change from firefox to soffice (For a Word document), though if I open the application drop down, firefox and other are still the only choices.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

forest wrote:
| I have the same problem, but with firefox 3.0b5 and xfce (xubuntu).
| I first encountered it with a profile that was upgraded from firefox
2, but creating a fresh profile didn't help.
| Pressing cancel simply cancels the download; no application or dialog
appears afterward.
|
| (Removing "incomplete" status, since the open questions have been
| answered.)
|
| ** Changed in: firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu)
| Status: Incomplete => New
|
Please leave the bug as incomplete so we can easily track the bug.
Moving it to new may get it lost in the bugs we havent gotten to yet.

- --
Sincerely Yours,
~ John Vivirito

https://launchpad.net/~gnomefreak
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JohnVivirito
Linux User# 414246
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[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Im gonna guess and say that the reason Forest isnt seeing the other apps open up is because he doesnt have soffice installed.
Forest answering questions isnt done until we can figure out what is causing this.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

OH and im gonna wait until we get RC1 pushed its in QA atm so should be in hardy and intrepid soon Gutsy we are waiting for our backport team to backport it since its not default in gutsy and it has new features not just bug fixes.

[Forest (foresto)]

Okay John, and sorry about that. (Someone in another report let me to believe launchpad would auto-close a bug that remained "incomplete" too long.)

No, I'm not using OpenOffice. The problem occurs for me when trying to open zip files. Regardless, I expect to be able to choose which program to open a file, even if I don't have someone else's choice of "correct" program installed at the time. Firefox 2 gave me that option.

I'm using Hardy, so I should be able to report pretty quickly after RC1 is released.

[Forest (foresto)]

After re-reading the messages here, and considering that I have been thinking in terms of bug 220504 (which was marked as a duplicate of this one), I think I should restate my situation. My problem is not exactly the same as described above; sorry for misleading.

In my case, clicking a zip archive link in firefox 3 does not ask me what app to launch, though firefox 2 did ask. (Same web site in both cases.) Instead, firefox 3 pops up a dialog that only gives me "save file" and "cancel" buttons. It does not offer to let me choose an application.

I'm running xubuntu hardy, upgraded from gutsy, using a new firefox 3 profile.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

forest wrote:
| After re-reading the messages here, and considering that I have been
| thinking in terms of bug 220504 (which was marked as a duplicate of this
| one), I think I should restate my situation. My problem is not exactly
| the same as described above; sorry for misleading.
|
| In my case, clicking a zip archive link in firefox 3 does not ask me
| what app to launch, though firefox 2 did ask. (Same web site in both
| cases.) Instead, firefox 3 pops up a dialog that only gives me "save
| file" and "cancel" buttons. It does not offer to let me choose an
| application.
|
| I'm running xubuntu hardy, upgraded from gutsy, using a new firefox 3
| profile.
|
Forest,
Sinc eyour bug report isnt the same please file a new report as this
will only cause confusion in the long run when one is fixed and the
other isnt.

- --
Sincerely Yours,
~ John Vivirito

https://launchpad.net/~gnomefreak
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JohnVivirito
Linux User# 414246
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[Mozilla-tibit (mozilla-tibit)]

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b5) Gecko/2008050509 Firefox/3.0b5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b5) Gecko/2008050509 Firefox/3.0b5

Firefox 3.0b5 does not offer a choice of helper applications when clicking certain .zip file links, while others work as expected. With the links in question, Firefox only offers "Save File" and "Cancel" buttons. I did not have this problem with Firefox 2, when clicking the same links.

Digging a little deeper with the Live HTTP Headers extension, I find that the links in question...
- do not have ".zip" in their URL
- have a content-type: application/octet-stream header
- have a content-disposition: attachment; filename="foo.zip" header

I'm guessing that Firefox 2 pays attention to content-disposition when detecting file types, while 3.0b5 is not quite as smart.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Click a link to a file whose content-disposition includes a well known file name extension, but whose content-type and url are not so helpful.
2. Expect to see the usual dialog box asking what helper application should handle the file.
Actual Results:
Watch as Firefox gives you only "Save File" and "Cancel" options.

Expected Results:
I expected to see the usual helper application dialog.

xubuntu 8.04 (hardy heron) linux
xfce desktop

[Forest (foresto)]

John,
Filed upstream: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435370

(Again, sorry about confusing the issue. I chimed in after having read far too many bug reports. :)

[Mozilla-tibit (mozilla-tibit)]

I think there are actually two bugs here:
1. Firefox is not using all available information to detect a file type.
2. When the file type is not detected, Firefox is not allowing me to choose a helper application.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

please attach an example .pdf file to this bug report.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

Does this still happen when you install the firefox-gnome-support package in ubuntu?

[Michael (michaeljt)]

http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/pdfs/reader_user_guide.pdf for example.

[Michael (michaeljt)]

If that helps you :) I see the bug when clicking on that link with Firefox.

[Mozilla-tibit (mozilla-tibit)]

That package looks like a dubious fix for an xfce desktop, because the deb description claims it "allows it to use protocol handlers from Gnome-VFS" but xfce's file manager doesn't use gnome vfs filesystems. I tried it anyway.

Yes, it still happens when firefox-gnome-support (and its dependencies) are installed.

[Jeroen Tietema (jtietema)]

Seems to be fixed in Firefox 3.0~rc1 packages

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 11:01:16AM -0000, Jeroen Tietema wrote:
> Seems to be fixed in Firefox 3.0~rc1 packages
>

anyone else can confirm this?

 affects ubuntu/firefox-3.0
 status incomplete

 - Alexander

[Michael (michaeljt)]

As the original reporter, I can confirm that it now works here (tested with the example link that I supplied above).

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 12:35:58PM -0000, Michael wrote:
> As the original reporter, I can confirm that it now works here (tested
> with the example link that I supplied above).
>

 affects ubuntu/firefox-3.0
 status fixreleased

 - Alexander

[Michael (michaeljt)]

Perhaps this should be reopened, as it is still not working as expected. I just tried opening two jpegs after another. When I opened the first one the only application on offer was Konqueror. When I opened the second, the only application available was Krita. I would expect more consistency here.

[Ryan Sinn (ryan-sinn)]

Doesn't work. I still do not receive an option to choose an application to view PDFs with ... Just Save or Cancel.

[Ryan Sinn (ryan-sinn)]

This link works now:

http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/pdfs/reader_user_guide.pdf for example.

But if it declares both documents to be "PDF Document" then why am I receiving two different dialogs?

[Jayhen (jay2004)]

I also have a problem opening attachments, using Kubuntu 8.04.1 and Firefox 3.0.1. Installing firefox-gnome-support fixed it

[Basic-NL (basic-nl)]

installing package mozplugger seems to work too.

[NomAAd (nomaad)]

I still have this bug, I've installed both firefox-gnome-support and mozplugger packages though...
I'm using Xubuntu 8.04.1 upgraded from 7.10, neither ubuntu-desktop nor kubuntu-desktop package is installed. I attach a screenshot of the situation.

It is not my Xubuntu 8.04.1, that faces this problem, but an another one too, what I installed for my father-in-law. This is the same from the aforementioned installed packages point of view.

[NomAAd (nomaad)]

A typo in the second paragraph.... correctly: "It is not my Xubuntu 8.04.1 ONLY, that ..."

Additionally, I'm sorry for the large picture file... I forgot to compress it more. I attach here a much smaller of that, its size is less than the tenth of the previous.

[Basic-NL (basic-nl)]

I still have this too. I thought installing mozplugger was the solution but seems not. The first pdf document on a webpage opens correct in Evince, but with the second document Firefox only gives the 'Save as' option. I didn't install the firefox-gnome-support package because I use Xubuntu.

[Bzbarsky (bzbarsky)]

Not a core issue. This is a pure UI issue with Firefox; they introduced the "simple" helper app dialog for some cases, and in this case that may or may not have been the right thing to do. In any case, the core code in this area most certainly looks at the content-disposition header.

sdwilsh, was there a reason you dumped this in core?

[Shawn Wilsher (sdwilsh)]

(In reply to comment #4)
> sdwilsh, was there a reason you dumped this in core?
Mostly because I forgot about Firefox::File Handling

[Caroline Ford (secretlondon)]

Jaunty netbook remix is affected by this. It's fixed by installing firefox-gome-support. Bug #377768.