Bizarre Firefox Behaviour

[Renegade]

I wrote this a short while ago:

http://cynic.me/2011/03/07/internet-explorer-download-problem-unable-to-open-this-internet-site/

Internet Explorer 7/8 throws an error when you pop a download through a meta refresh or iframe. The error message looks like this (I’ve blurred the domain as it’s not public yet):

Internet Explorer - Unable to open this Internet site

Searching around didn’t reveal anything of any particular use. Most “solutions” were for clients, which when you’re running a server, doesn’t help much.

Anyways, I decided to go back to basics, and try something really simple… Change the MIME type.

While the MIME type should be “application/octet-stream” for a binary setup file (program installer). However, simply changing it to “application/zip” fixes the problem in Internet Explorer, and popping meta refresh downloads then works.

Well, it was working properly... However, today I noticed that Firefox downloads it then adds a ".zip" extension. WTF? That's very odd. (It didn't before.)

Anyways, I fixed it to be a conditional download, but it just seems wrong that a browser would take it upon itself to rename files.

Is it just me, or is that odd?

[housetier]

Maybe FF renamed the file according to MIME-type?

[f0dder]

Maybe FF renamed the file according to MIME-type?

Yes, but is that proper behavior? I think that's what Renegade is asking

[Renegade]

Maybe FF renamed the file according to MIME-type?

Yes, but is that proper behavior? I think that's what Renegade is asking

Exactly.

As far as I can see, it's simply flat out wrong. A file extension has no necessary connection to the content. e.g. DOCX, XSLX and PPTX files are all ZIP files!

Lots of files use ZIP compression as a container format. Renaming with a .zip extension breaks compatibility.

[Renegade]

Anyways, reported it here.