[Discuss] Yet another reason why Internet Explorer is bad....

[R. Langkamer]

On 10/16/07 2:39 PM, Adam Parkin wrote:
> Okay, I know this is preaching to the choir as I'm sure that 100% of 
> VLUG readers don't use Internet Explorer as their browser, but I'm 
> justifying this mini-rant as a "sharing info that perhaps we should be 
> aware of".
> 
> I'm the TA for CSC 212 this term at UVic and for the course students 
> need to grab a Java jar file from the course website, download it to 
> their lab machine and run the software.
> 
> I figured no biggie, just put a link to the jar file on the course 
> website, and when students click the link they get the "Open or Save As" 
> dialog.  In Firefox this of course works as it should, when the user 
> clicks Save As, it saves a copy of the jar file to their local machine.
> 
> In IE however, it realizes that a Jar file is just a Zip file in 
> disguise, and *automatically renames the file* to become a zip file 
> instead.  Thus, then what happens is students get a zip file on their 
> desktop instead of a Java jar file, and when double-clicking it they get 
> the standard compressed file viewer in Windows instead of running the 
> actual software creating confusion as to why the software won't work as 
> it should.
> 
> In what possible way could a browser automatically renaming a file that 
> the user has asked to download be a good idea?  In the Windows world of 
> file extensions determining a file's type this completely changes the 
> meaning of what the file is and how it's handled.  Recall as well that 
> by default Windows will hide file extensions from the user, so there's 
> no way for users to fix the problem unless they go into Windows 
> Explorer's options and turn on "Show File Extensions" (which any decent 
> user *should* do, but of course the default is what ACTUALLY happens in 
>  most cases).  Even then they still need to know that the file should be 
> renamed to have an extension of jar and not zip.
> 
> Horribly, horribly poor design decision by MS.
> 
> Note: this was tested in IE 7 as that's what's installed in the UVic 
> labs, and the only version on my office machine.  Don't know if prior 
> versions do the same thing.


	One thing you could try (if you have the access), is to set the mime 
type/header that is reported by the server when an "http client" 
requests the file. It might be that the server is sending it as a "zip" 
file instead of "as-is" or text.

	Of course I could be way off here and it just might indeed be a 
"microsoft-ism". ;)

-- 

Sincerely,

R. Langkamer

cross platform specialist
Mac - Linux - windows

Langkamer I.T.
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