Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

Gullible Jones · 2006-07-23 18:48:17

As of the current version of Firefox, you have to manually browse through your bin directories to find the right application for the browser to open a given file with, even if said file is already associated with some application (e.g. PDF files with epdfview). This hasn't always been the case, and it smells like a bug to me, but I've never seen anyone complaining about it here or on the bugtracker, so I wanted to ask - is there something I might be doing wrong? With desktop-file-utils, gmime, etc. installed, Firefox still seems quite blind to file associations, is there something else I ought to install?

Kern · 2006-07-23 22:14:39

i thought it was normal to have to find the app in the bin directories.
recently i had all mine set up. ie Xine to play movie files, acroread for pdfs. since the full upgrade its all gone awry, and FF tries to open pdf's with openoffice, movies with mplayer etc.

Gullible Jones · 2006-07-23 22:24:24

It is normal to find the apps in bin directories but you shouldn't have to go snooping around in them to find the right app... That's what MIME data is for. The desktop mime database (built using desktop-file-utils) associates certain apps with certain filetypes, e.g. GIMP is associated with image files by default, etc. But Firefox doesn't see these associations any more and therefore requires you to find the application yourself.

Kern · 2006-07-24 07:37:19

ah thanks for that, its something i wasnt aware of.
i thought mime was something to do with Marcel Marceau

baze · 2006-07-24 09:21:15

i always found it annyoing to chose the right program, but i never thought about it that way that firefox ignores fd.org mime data.
but now i'd say you're right

PeteMo · 2006-07-24 11:14:17

I've found that although firefox pops up the window asking you to choose which app to use, if I just click "ok", often it will play open the file with the correct application anyway.

smoon · 2006-07-24 11:49:14

I recently switched from Firefox to Epiphany because of stuff like that. Epiphany uses the MIME-database, has a pretty neat bookmarking system, features extensions and is native GTK+ and thus is much snappier than Firefox' XUL interface. I recommend you guys just give it a try. Galeon is also pretty nice but unfortunately no longer maintained. (Of course, your Firefox plugins will work with Epiphany as well)

Gullible Jones · 2006-07-24 12:15:46

pmo6022 wrote:

I've found that although firefox pops up the window asking you to choose which app to use, if I just click "ok", often it will play open the file with the correct application anyway.

I've never seen that happen... With me it's always done nothing if you just click "Okay".

smoon wrote:

I recently switched from Firefox to Epiphany because of stuff like that. Epiphany uses the MIME-database, has a pretty neat bookmarking system, features extensions and is native GTK+ and thus is much snappier than Firefox' XUL interface. I recommend you guys just give it a try. Galeon is also pretty nice but unfortunately no longer maintained. (Of course, your Firefox plugins will work with Epiphany as well)

I use Galeon when on Gnome, but both Galeon and Epiphany require 50 MB worth of Gnome libraries. With, say, XFCE, I'm pretty much stuck with Firefox.

(I dislike Epiphany because, despite the speed and the nice features, it has some incredibly annoying defaults that you cannot turn off, even with Gconf Editor. I've also tried Kazehakase... I find it to be fugly and slow, and the interface to be overcomplicated and counterintuitive. But that is just IMO, and it is not the issue here... The issue is that Firefox is behaving in a way that it should not.)

Chman · 2006-07-24 13:28:47

I use Epiphany too since 6 months. It's fast (Gtk - no XUL), and once you've customized it as you like it's very nive to use. I like the KISS philosophy, and Epiphany respects it (no useless things - I only need tabs and mouse gestures).

And I don't mind installing 30/50Mb libraries just for it (I'm running Openbox). HDD space is cheap those days...

I dislike Epiphany because, despite the speed and the nice features, it has some incredibly annoying defaults that you cannot turn off, even with Gconf Editor.

Fixed width tabs with arrows on each side, isn't it ?

About Firefox and mime type, maybe you should fill a bug report ?

smoon · 2006-07-24 14:30:51

Chman wrote:

[...]
I dislike Epiphany because, despite the speed and the nice features, it has some incredibly annoying defaults that you cannot turn off, even with Gconf Editor.
Fixed width tabs with arrows on each side, isn't it ?
[...]

If it is that, that's easily fixable: The "Only One Close Button" extension from http://www.sstuhr.dk/epiphany-extensions/ makes the tabs behave like in Firefox.

phrakture · 2006-07-24 14:46:47

Gullible Jones wrote:

It is normal to find the apps in bin directories but you shouldn't have to go snooping around in them to find the right app... That's what MIME data is for. The desktop mime database (built using desktop-file-utils) associates certain apps with certain filetypes, e.g. GIMP is associated with image files by default, etc. But Firefox doesn't see these associations any more and therefore requires you to find the application yourself.

Firefox reads the mailcap file. I've been looking into (off and on) creating a nice mailcap generation scheme for official arch packages. As it stands, the al-mime (and al-mime-data) package in the AUR is pretty decent.

Gullible Jones · 2006-07-24 18:17:49

Thanks Phrak... Is this something recent? I remember Firefox 1.0.x auto-opening torrent files with BitTorrent, movies with a media player, etc...

[Edit: BTW the al-mime and al-mime-data packages are now orphaned, is there anyone willing to take up maintainance? I would but I'm an ignoramus with Python.]

Chman wrote:

Fixed width tabs with arrows on each side, isn't it ?

smoon wrote:

If it is that, that's easily fixable: The "Only One Close Button" extension from http://www.sstuhr.dk/epiphany-extensions/ makes the tabs behave like in Firefox.

No... It:

a) Asks me for my passwords all the time (no option to turn off password storage).
b) Can't treat all cookies as session cookies.
c) Won't let me jump straight into new tabs, instead I have to click on them.

(Also, Galeon/Epiphany's use of GTK doesn't seem to make a great deal of difference. If you drag a window, a terminal for instance, across a Galeon or Epiphany window, the redraw times for widgets will be longer than for, say, Nautilus - in fact, they'll be as long as for Firefox. It looks like the GTK bindings for Gecko do something that causes ass-slow redraws, ala PyGTK.)

smoon · 2006-07-24 18:32:13

Gullible Jones wrote:

[...]
No... It:
a) Asks me for my passwords all the time (no option to turn off password storage).

What do you mean by that? Epiphany behaves exactly the same as Firefox in this regards. I enter a username/password combination, Epiphany asks if it should store this combination and I can click on "Never for this site", "Not now" or "Remember". How is Firefox different?

b) Can't treat all cookies as session cookies.

No idea about that, at least I never noticed it.

c) Won't let me jump straight into new tabs, instead I have to click on them.

Huh? I can press Alt+2 and get straigt to the second tab...

(Also, Galeon/Epiphany's use of GTK doesn't seem to make a great deal of difference. If you drag a window, a terminal for instance, across a Galeon or Epiphany window, the redraw times for widgets will be longer than for, say, Nautilus - in fact, they'll be as long as for Firefox. It looks like the GTK bindings for Gecko do something that causes ass-slow redraws, ala PyGTK.)

Not for me. I just tested it with this page in Epiphany (some more pages were loaded in other tabs) and in Firefox. Firefox redraws really sloooooow while with Epiphany I can't see any redrawing at all (read: what was behind the terminal window is instantly visible again once the terminal is moved away).

Anyway, I'm not the kind of guy to make people switch to some software by all means, just use the Browser you like best The reason I'm responding again is just that I'm curious

Gullible Jones · 2006-07-24 18:59:31

smoon wrote:

Gullible Jones wrote:
[...]
No... It:
a) Asks me for my passwords all the time (no option to turn off password storage).
What do you mean by that? Epiphany behaves exactly the same as Firefox in this regards. I enter a username/password combination, Epiphany asks if it should store this combination and I can click on "Never for this site", "Not now" or "Remember". How is Firefox different?

It lets you turn any and all password storageoff. You can uncheck a box in the Preferences panel and never be bothered by that message again.

(Yes, I use my brain to store passwords. It works well enough.)

b) Can't treat all cookies as session cookies.
No idea about that, at least I never noticed it.

In Firefox and Galeon it's a cookie-handling option.

c) Won't let me jump straight into new tabs, instead I have to click on them.
Huh? I can press Alt+2 and get straigt to the second tab...

You can't make it bring the new tab to the foreground automatically. Galeon and Firefox have options for that in their control panels.

(Also, Galeon/Epiphany's use of GTK doesn't seem to make a great deal of difference. If you drag a window, a terminal for instance, across a Galeon or Epiphany window, the redraw times for widgets will be longer than for, say, Nautilus - in fact, they'll be as long as for Firefox. It looks like the GTK bindings for Gecko do something that causes ass-slow redraws, ala PyGTK.)

Not for me. I just tested it with this page in Epiphany (some more pages were loaded in other tabs) and in Firefox. Firefox redraws really sloooooow while with Epiphany I can't see any redrawing at all (read: what was behind the terminal window is instantly visible again once the terminal is moved away).

Huh. What's your hardware? Are you running XGL or a composite manager? Do you have Pango support for Gecko enabled or disabled? Because I have yet to encounter a Gecko browser that doesn't have horrendous widget redraw times, even when using XFT (which improves performance a lot).

Anyway, I'm not the kind of guy to make people switch to some software by all means, just use the Browser you like best The reason I'm responding again is just that I'm curious

The browser I like best is Konqueror... Unfortunately it uses QT and is not portable.

aquila_deus · 2006-07-27 03:02:48

smoon wrote:

I recently switched from Firefox to Epiphany because of stuff like that. Epiphany uses the MIME-database, has a pretty neat bookmarking system, features extensions and is native GTK+ and thus is much snappier than Firefox' XUL interface. I recommend you guys just give it a try. Galeon is also pretty nice but unfortunately no longer maintained. (Of course, your Firefox plugins will work with Epiphany as well)

Epiphany, like most other gnome apps, cannot work with keyboard. Try type "R" in the password save prompt (as it shows) and you will see it takes no effect at all.

Bogart · 2007-05-22 22:39:49

Just for the record, an alternative to creating a /etc/mailcap file with all the info for each file, installing libgnome makes Firefox handle filetypes correctly.

Gullible Jones · 2007-05-22 23:36:23

... And defeats the idea of using a non-Gnome browser.

Fortunately Kazehakase has at this point become a viable option. And IIRC, there's a project going on right now to integrate libgnome into GTK.

Jessehk · 2007-05-23 00:28:44

Opera.

P.S. Sorry, won't happen again.

badger · 2007-05-23 01:28:02

aquila_deus wrote:

Epiphany, like most other gnome apps, cannot work with keyboard. Try type "R" in the password save prompt (as it shows) and you will see it takes no effect at all.

Perhaps you have been skipping the use of the "accel" key? (usually is it alt). Under Firefox (and I've just checked Epiphany) to enact the button, in this case, use alt-r. You can tweak the accel key to use in Firefox (in about:config see ui.key.accelKey [I believe]), maybe you can for Gnome or Epiphany? Something: http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config_entries#UI..2A

regards

edit: jeez, this thread is on the old side- sorry for stating the obvious!

Last edited by badger (2007-05-23 01:35:07)

Arch Linux

#1 2006-07-23 18:48:17

Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#2 2006-07-23 22:14:39

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#3 2006-07-23 22:24:24

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#4 2006-07-24 07:37:19

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#5 2006-07-24 09:21:15

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#6 2006-07-24 11:14:17

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#7 2006-07-24 11:49:14

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#8 2006-07-24 12:15:46

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#9 2006-07-24 13:28:47

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#10 2006-07-24 14:30:51

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#11 2006-07-24 14:46:47

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#12 2006-07-24 18:17:49

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#13 2006-07-24 18:32:13

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#14 2006-07-24 18:59:31

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#15 2006-07-27 03:02:48

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#16 2007-05-22 22:39:49

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#17 2007-05-22 23:36:23

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#18 2007-05-23 00:28:44

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

#19 2007-05-23 01:28:02

Re: Firefox has no respect for freedesktop MIME stuff

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