Firefox does not know what to do with downloaded files

On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 08:54:27PM -0000, dotancohen wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> Binary package hint: firefox
>
> When Firefox encounters a filetype that it is unfamiliar with, the user
> is presented the file picker dialog box, to select a program to open the
> file with. By default, the file selector starts with the user's home
> directory. This confuses new users, who are expecting a list of
> installed programs to choose from. Many users do not know that they must
> navigate to /usr/bin/ and even if they know that much, they likely do
> not know the name of the executable they need. I recommend that when
> Firefox encounters a new file type, the user be presented with the same
> dialog box that is presented when choosing "Open With" from a file's
> context menu, with a list of available programs.
>

Are you using kubuntu? do you have firefox-gnome-support package
installed?

 status incomplete

 - Alexander

Yes, I am using Kubuntu 8.04. I do have firefox-gnome-support installed, however.

Another usage example:
When I download a PDF file, Firefox asks whether to open the file with KPDF (my default PDF viewer) or to save the file. If I save the file, then right-click the file in the Download Manager, Firefox pops up a dialog box telling me that I need an external application to open the file and asks me to pick one. I must pick the file with the GTK file picker, which starts in $HOME.

For Tools > Download application all the files seems to be "file" type, so when you double-clicked it, launch applications ask you for watching a program. (for everyone, jpg, zip, rar, ogg, mp3...)

Even if you choose Open Folder it ask you witch application use for "file" links.

Clean install of Kubuntu 8.10 beta. I have only installed Firefox (and for the second check I installed firefox-gnome-support, followed by a reboot).

Both with firefox-gnome-support and without, I get the same behaviour: Firefox asks which application to use to open the file. The default directory in the File Chooser is $HOME.

Same screenshot as before, with .png filename extension.

If seems that one of the improvements to Ubuntu done by the Linux Mint team is to try to improve the way Firefox handles this issue. Therefore this bug can be considered confirmed. Please see the Elyssa Release Notes where the issue is mentioned:
http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_elyssa_fluxbox.php#knownIssues

Can someone with Ubuntu confirm if this is a Kubuntu-only issue or if this affects Gnome as well? Thanks.

I can confirm that this issue still exists in Kubuntu 9.04 alpha 6.

To be clearer, here are reproduction instructions:
1) Click to download this file (Firefox should be configured not to handle PDF files):
http://www.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/ghacks-linux-pdf-december-2008.pdf
2) The "What should Firefox do with this file" dialog should open.
3) Choose Open With -> Other

What happens?
The user is presented with the "File Chooser" dialog.

What should happen?
The user should be presented with the same dialog that he would get if he chose "Open With -> Other" from the context menu of his file manager.

I have confirmed this issue on both the latest Kubuntu and Ubuntu versions (8.10).

Here is a screenshot of the user clicking Open With -> Other and getting the File Chooser dialog.

This is bad because the user expects a list of programs in Open With, he does not expect to see his file hierarchy. This is the dialog that the user should see if he chooses Save File, not Open With.

marking both tasks as incomplete until we get upstream bug and see where it leads us.
All UI changes should be filed here and upstream. We do not make UI changes on most things

Here is the upstream:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=490124

I just installed Kubuntu 9.04 because I read it was the most polished distro ever, but am getting serious flak from my wife - she hates the fact that PDF and Word files on the web don't open for her.

I'd love to see Linux on the desktop succeed but this is the sorft of usability / out of the box issue that holds Windows users back. KPDF and OO are installed by default in kubuntu (and I guess Ubuntu too) - would it not be possible to just set them up as default handlers? Even a half-assed inelegant solution is better than none here.

A better upstream is here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=397700

Why is this tagged Wishlist? As can be seen from the upstream, this is clearly a bug. Firefox works as expected in Windows XP, but not in Kubuntu.

This can be smoothly resolved in the mean time if Firefox is shipped with different defaults, namely to have xdg-open available as an option for all file types (which I believe is possible) and to have every file type which is not to be viewed internally instead opened using /usr/bin/xdg-open.

If possible, have xdg-open named "Default application" or some such in Firefox, so that something like the download method dialog says "Open with [default application]".

I don't know much about Firefox, and I've never looked at its source, but it shouldn't take much effort to implement and the result for end users would be terrific.

The last comment of defaulting app to xdg-open (or gnome-open) seems to be simple to implement and will greatly ease ubuntu experience.

This bug is a major issue for normal users because :
1) they don't always know the name of the application, nautilus usually choose for them.
2) they don't know the exact command line name for the application (example : in the menu you will click on Text Editor OpenOffice.org, but the real binary name is in fact ooffice)
3) only advanced users know how to browse to /bin and use the keyboard to find the app between the 129 applications I have in /bin
4) they have to do again an association filetype->program. They usually did that already in nautilus.

So I want to promote this bug to the hundredpapercut project

See also brainstorm : http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/4755/

I've had this problem, and I think it would be a great papercut to solve.