DefaultApplicationsFirefox

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Revision 1 as of 2005-10-29 23:48:37
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Revision 3 as of 2005-10-31 20:20:10
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Comment: specify proposed behaviour
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http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7023

Firefox should use the same default applications for opening unknown file types as GNOME, ideally through proper integration with GNOME, or at a minimum ship its own matching default settings.
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Firefox's current mechanisms for determining which program to run are (a) inconsistent and (b) broken.

See also:
http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=18661
and some bug I can't find right now about mad mime type handling.
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The behaviour should be as follows:

 * If the file's mime-type can be handled by firefox internally then firefox should do so.
 * If it cannot, then firefox should do with the file what Nautilus would do with it except that if that involves executing the file it should want to save it to disk.
 * There should be a way to tell firefox `open with ...' which should provide the options (1) firefox's internal display engine treating the file as html (2) firefox's internal display engine treating the file as text/plain (3) save to disk (4) same as Nautilus open with.

Getting this correct may not be feasible given the current parlous state of the mime handling system in at least firefox 1.0.7. But we will try to get as close as possible.
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This is more a case of looking at the right patches and the source than a BOF. If anyone has more useful information like that below then please provide it.

Summary

http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7023

Firefox should use the same default applications for opening unknown file types as GNOME, ideally through proper integration with GNOME, or at a minimum ship its own matching default settings.

Rationale

Firefox's current mechanisms for determining which program to run are (a) inconsistent and (b) broken.

See also: http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=18661 and some bug I can't find right now about mad mime type handling.

Use cases

Scope

Design

The behaviour should be as follows:

  • If the file's mime-type can be handled by firefox internally then firefox should do so.
  • If it cannot, then firefox should do with the file what Nautilus would do with it except that if that involves executing the file it should want to save it to disk.
  • There should be a way to tell firefox `open with ...' which should provide the options (1) firefox's internal display engine treating the file as html (2) firefox's internal display engine treating the file as text/plain (3) save to disk (4) same as Nautilus open with.

Getting this correct may not be feasible given the current parlous state of the mime handling system in at least firefox 1.0.7. But we will try to get as close as possible.

Implementation

This is more a case of looking at the right patches and the source than a BOF. If anyone has more useful information like that below then please provide it.

Comments:

  • JeffWaugh: Red Hat have patches, which may be upstream in the 1.5 branch, to integrate with the xdg-mime standard (instead of mailcap). On top of that, we may want to do some mailcap/xdg-mime synchronisation, so that other apps (such as mutt) can take advantage of the xdg-mime information.

  • MarkShuttleworth: We don't want to see the "do you want to do this by default?" box - just DOIT! If the Red Hat patches don't land, we want to hard code this. (JeffWaugh: ... or fix mailcap, by hardcoding or synchronising.)

Code

Data preservation and migration

Outstanding issues

BoF agenda and discussion

DefaultApplicationsFirefox (last edited 2008-08-06 16:32:37 by localhost)