[imp] Vista/IE/IMP attachment weirdness
Kevin Konowalec
can...
We're running:
- Horde 3.2.1
- IMP 4.2
- PHP 5.2.3
The complaints coming in have been that people are having problems
downloading attachments. They claim they click on the download icon
and a box pops up saying it's looking for the file information and
then it just sits and spins, never downloading the attachment.
So on investigation we found that we WERE able to re-create the
problem...but ONLY on Windows Vista running IE 7. This seemed to only
be a problem with certain file formats. For example, .doc
and .docx, .xls, .rtf, etc would fail but others, such as .pdf, would
open immediately. When I finally found the browser settings (which
took forever... they moved everything for IE7 so I don't know where
anything is anymore) it said that .doc/.docx, for example, were
associated with Word... so it doesn't look like a file association
problem. The same thing happens when you simply try to download and
save the file without opening it. To me it's almost as if IE7/Vista
isn't talking to IMP properly so the download is never initiated.
It's also not the file itself, since the same file can be downloaded
in IE7/Vista from Hotmail.
I'm also being told that when you attempt to open certain file types
(mentioned above) if you click on the filename (if it's clickable) the
file opens, but if you click on the download icon you see the behavior
I described above). Files like .docx that imp doesn't know about (I'm
guessing) don't have clickable filenames to associate with a program
so there's no alternative for them.
There are two workarounds we've found so far. First... use Firefox.
Using Firefox on Vista works 100% of the time. No problem at all.
The other workaround seems to be to simply forward the message with
the attachment and when inside the compose screen click on the
attachment to preview it. That also works all the time in IE7/Vista.
Something's screwy... anyone have any clue what it might be? I know
this is kind of a vague description but it's a tough nut to crack
since it seems to only affect a few people in a few certain
instances. We had to borrow a student's computer to be able to
recreate the problem (nobody is running vista here... and this is just
another reason why)
K
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Michael M Slusarz
> Okay we've got a strange one here. I'll try to explain it as best I can...
>
> We're running:
> - Horde 3.2.1
> - IMP 4.2
> - PHP 5.2.3
>
> The complaints coming in have been that people are having problems
> downloading attachments. They claim they click on the download icon
> and a box pops up saying it's looking for the file information and
> then it just sits and spins, never downloading the attachment.
>
> So on investigation we found that we WERE able to re-create the
> problem...but ONLY on Windows Vista running IE 7. This seemed to
> only be a problem with certain file formats. For example, .doc and
> .docx, .xls, .rtf, etc would fail but others, such as .pdf, would
> open immediately. When I finally found the browser settings (which
> took forever... they moved everything for IE7 so I don't know where
> anything is anymore) it said that .doc/.docx, for example, were
> associated with Word... so it doesn't look like a file association
> problem. The same thing happens when you simply try to download and
> save the file without opening it. To me it's almost as if IE7/Vista
> isn't talking to IMP properly so the download is never initiated.
> It's also not the file itself, since the same file can be downloaded
> in IE7/Vista from Hotmail.
Older versions of IE were broken when it came to downloading files -
we had to alter the download links in various ways to "trick" IE into
downloading instead of viewing.
> I'm also being told that when you attempt to open certain file types
> (mentioned above) if you click on the filename (if it's clickable)
> the file opens, but if you click on the download icon you see the
> behavior I described above).
This is a bit disturbing. Clicking on the filename *should*, if a
viewer is configured, open up a HTML-rendered viewer, not display the
file. For files without a MIME Viewer, this link should be identical
to the download link.
> Files like .docx that imp doesn't know about (I'm guessing) don't
> have clickable filenames to associate with a program so there's no
> alternative for them.
>
> There are two workarounds we've found so far. First... use Firefox.
> Using Firefox on Vista works 100% of the time. No problem at all.
> The other workaround seems to be to simply forward the message with
> the attachment and when inside the compose screen click on the
> attachment to preview it. That also works all the time in IE7/Vista.
>
> Something's screwy... anyone have any clue what it might be? I know
> this is kind of a vague description but it's a tough nut to crack
> since it seems to only affect a few people in a few certain
> instances. We had to borrow a student's computer to be able to
> recreate the problem (nobody is running vista here... and this is
> just another reason why)
As mentioned above, my guess is that this has nothing to do with Vista
per se but that Microsoft fixed IE 7 so our attempts at "tricking"
these newer versions of IE are not needed anymore. Unfortunately, I
don't use MS Office so I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to
reproduce this if this is a MS Office only issue.
michael
--
___________________________________
Michael Slusarz [slu...@horde.org]
Michael M Slusarz
> Okay we've got a strange one here. I'll try to explain it as best I can...
>
> We're running:
> - Horde 3.2.1
> - IMP 4.2
> - PHP 5.2.3
>
> The complaints coming in have been that people are having problems
> downloading attachments. They claim they click on the download icon
> and a box pops up saying it's looking for the file information and
> then it just sits and spins, never downloading the attachment.
>
> So on investigation we found that we WERE able to re-create the
> problem...but ONLY on Windows Vista running IE 7. This seemed to
> only be a problem with certain file formats. For example, .doc and
> .docx, .xls, .rtf, etc would fail but others, such as .pdf, would
> open immediately. When I finally found the browser settings (which
> took forever... they moved everything for IE7 so I don't know where
> anything is anymore) it said that .doc/.docx, for example, were
> associated with Word... so it doesn't look like a file association
> problem. The same thing happens when you simply try to download and
> save the file without opening it. To me it's almost as if IE7/Vista
> isn't talking to IMP properly so the download is never initiated.
> It's also not the file itself, since the same file can be downloaded
> in IE7/Vista from Hotmail.
Testing on my machine, downloading .doc attachments works fine. That
being said, it is also important to note that I have OpenOffice
configured to view .doc files on my system. So an interesting test
would be find a machine that is having issues, installing OpenOffice,
having OpenOffice view those attachments, and then attempting to
download a .doc file again. But I can verify that this doesn't seem
to be an inherent Vista issue.
BTW, using Vista SP1, my IE 7 is listed as version 7.0.6001.18000
michael
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___________________________________
Michael Slusarz [slu...@horde.org]
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