Re: Strange change in Icecat.

[Mark H Weaver]

Hi Richard,

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> I recently updated Icecat (and the rest of Trisquel).
> I've noticed an inconvenient change.
>
> I visited a URL for an MP3 file: https://skeptoid.com/audio/skeptoid-4812.mp3.
>
> A week ago, visiting that URL gave a player in the window, and started
> streaming and playing the file.
>
> Now it downloads the file and asks me what to do with it.
> I selected "open VLC".  It downloaded the file, and then started VLC.
> That worked, but I had to wait several minutes for the download.

Interesting.  I'm able to reproduce this problem with the URL that you
provided above, but for all other *.mp3 URLs that I've tried, IceCat
opens a player in the IceCat window and allows you to start listening
immediately, before the download is complete.  Here are some examples
that I've tried:

  https://tucradio.org/audio/211221_nils_melzer_on_assange.mp3
  https://lawanddisorder.org/wp-content/uploads/lawanddisorder20210614.mp3
  https://www.ecoshock.net/downloads/ES_211110_Show.mp3
  http://www.cchange.net/wp-content/uploads/podcasts/SC-2021-03-09.mp3

Do you see the same suboptimal behavior with the URLs above?

I guess there's something unusual about the skeptoid.com site that's
causing this problem.  I have an idea: it might be because its HTTP
response headers include "Content-Disposition: attachment", which is not
present in the response headers from the other web sites that I tried.

You can see the HTTP response headers using "wget -S <URL>".

> What changed this, and how can I put it back?

I guess it was a change made in upstream Firefox since the version that
the older IceCat was based on.  Fortunately, in my experience, visiting
*.mp3 URLs on most web sites brings up a player within IceCat, as you've
come to expect and prefer.

I don't know how to restore the old behavior for the skeptoid.com site,
and I don't have time to investigate, but if someone would like to look
into it and propose a patch to improve things, I'd be glad to consider
applying it to IceCat.

     Thanks,
       Mark

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