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Main Area and Open Discussion => General Software Discussion => Topic started by: mouser on December 04, 2009, 02:46 AM
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I've noticed over the last few months a consistent problem in firefox -- sometimes when trying to download a file, a beep is heard instantly after the file save name dialog is accepted.
The cause appears to be when the file name is slightly unusual -- nonstandard characters in the filename (% and such). I suspect it's a security thing, but these files are really quite fine and the filenames aren't harmful.
Clearly this is not good behavior -- to close with a beep with no warning or error or any sign that anything unusual has occurred other than the beep.
It may be a firefox plugin or an option i have set.. any ideas? Anyone know what i'm talking about?
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Could it be a virus scanning option or an adblocker setting?
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Is it the 'Save as...' box only or the entire Firefox that will close on you?
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it's just the actual save that is aborted - the save as box closes as normal after you click "save", but you hear a beep and you can tell (took me a while to realize what as happening) that it just aborted the download completely without any warning.
i'm on windows xp pro x64 and i've noticed the problem for a couple of months.
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Moons ago I ran into a similar problem with some FTP clients that would crash if the filename being downloaded contained the % character. The fix was to edit out the character when selecting the SAVE AS filename.
Possibly these characters are being interpreted by Firefox as a token, wildcard, internal command, or delimiter of some sort? Almost sounds like it's being interpreted as an EOF marker.
Then there's also the issue of cross-platform compatibility. Firefox runs on multiple operating systems. Is the % symbol an illegal character in some other OS filesystem that Firefox is coded to intercept?
FWIW I seem to remember it being told it's a good idea not to use the characters !:@#<>$%^&* in your filenames even if your OS permits them.
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Firefox downloading has been causing problems for lots of people for several minor releases now. Go to the Mozilla forums and you'll be overwhelmed by all the downloading bug posts! I started noticing it after the release of the 3.5.x series and I also notice the problems continue in the 3.6 beta series. Its gotten to the point where I'm almost ready to switch to IE8. (never thought I'd hear myself say that!)
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Firefox downloading has been causing problems for lots of people for several minor releases now. Go to the Mozilla forums and you'll be overwhelmed by all the downloading bug posts!
-phillfri
Pretty interesting. I've been running 3.5 since it came out (currently up to V3.5.5) on all my business and personal machines and I haven't encountered any issues with downloads. Ditto for all my clients that are running Fox. And we're all bigtime downloaders.
Is there a consensus emerging as to what is causing all these problems?
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When it happens to me I sometimes get a specific scripting error message referencing a download script. I've posted the error message on the Mozilla bugs site. Sometimes downloading works okay, sometimes it freezes Firefox, sometimes it just freezes the current tab in Firefox, and sometimes it just sits there for a minute or so and will eventually complete. There seems to be no consistency in the pattern.
I do notice that the problem seems more prevalent on my Asus EeePC 1000H than on my desktops. I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium on all my machines.