Firefox Display Issue with Encoding?

[Stryker]

This is a strange one...
I went to download a BIOS update for a friend because he was having a problem getting it (he uses FF also). When I went to the same page he was having trouble with, I see the same issue. HERE'S A SCREEN SHOT of what we are seeing. Now that I've been to this site where the problem happens, I'm having the same issue on other sites that have worked until this point.

I'm not going to give a link to the page where the issue happened because I don't want this to happen to anyone else, but the URL is in the screen shot. Does anyone know what's going on with my FF?

Thanks very much,
Stryker

[glc]

Options, downloads. Remove EXE from the file types, then the download manager should give you the choice to save to disk, which is what you want.

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by glc Options, downloads. Remove EXE from the file types, then the download manager should give you the choice to save to disk, which is what you want.

Hi glc,
Thanks, I actually have it set to auto save every file I download to my Desktop, and .exe is not in the list of file types either.

The strange part is, if I go to the same link in I.E., it does not download a file but goes to another page. Could the link perhaps be using an .exe file to redirect me and Firefox doesn't like that?

[aym]

Hmm, I typed the URL and I was forwarded to the mirrors page you mentioned, using Firefox 1.0.

Don't know, maybe it's a MIME type issue and the server isn't sending the correct MIME type for the file, it's probably sending text/html or something in some cases.

Standards say the browser should use MIME type sent by server, which is what Firefox does. IE, OTOH, tries to guess the file's MIME type, and sometimes ignores server MIME type.

Just a wild guess here, as I couldn't reproduce the problem.

EDIT:
To solve this kind of problems, right-click the link, and select save as.

[Stryker]

Thanks for the replies guys, but I just kind of stumbled onto a fix.
I just cleared my cache and restarted Firefox and tried again... and it worked perfectly.

Problem is solved, but kind of curious... why would this happen (theoretically)? Should I just turn caching off in FF?

Thanks again for the help guys, appreciate it.
Stryker

[j4ck]

I would be interested in getting an answer to this question too. I had the exact same problem when I tried to get a mobo manual from giga-byte online. I eventually gave up on FF and used IE to view the document.

[glc]

The hazards of using an alternative browser. There are a lot of sites out there that are either coded badly (and IE is very forgiving of bad code) or are coded specifically to IE standards, not W3C standards. This is one reason why no matter what browser you use and no matter how much you hate IE, don't get rid of IE.