Jonathan Baird writes:
> Sam Varshavchik ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is rumored to have said:
> > On Wed, 2 Aug 2000, Jonathan Baird wrote:
> >
> > > However, today we discovered that we can't download attachments with MSIE 5
> > > but with Netscape it works fine.
> > >
> > > Has anyone else experienced this?
> >
> > Yeah -- certain versions of MSIE are buggy. Let me guess: the dumb beast
> > whines that it doesn't know what to do with the file, or something along
> > those lines.
>
> It says:
>
> "Internet Explorer cannot download XXXbig long numberXXX from secure1.netsville.com
>
> Internet Explorer was not able to open this Internet site. The requested site
> is either unavailable or cannot be found. Please try again later."
>
>
> >
> > > Any solution?
> >
> > The typical one: upgrade MSIE to the latest one available.
>
> We upgraded MSIE to the latest and it's still not working.
The only thing I can possibly suggest is to try to change the filename
extension of the attachment. The problem with MSIE 4.x was that it was
discarding the MIME content-type it received from the server, and instead
attempted to figure out the type of the server response based on the
filename extension. Perhaps something similar is broken in MSIE 5.x as
well.
HTTP servers provide the MIME content-type of each response to HTTP
clients, and that's what clients must use to figure out what to do with the
response (render it as HTML, as plain text, or download the response if its
content is unrecognized). Additionally even for known and understood MIME
content-type, such as HTML, the MIME content-disposition can tell the HTTP
client that the response should be saved in a file.
The fact that MSIE ignores all these established standards, instead
choosing to follow its own arkane and convoluted logic, from time to time,
really shows contempt for established Internet protocols. I find it very
distastesful. This isn't an accidental programming bug in MSIE. This is
deliberate and willful ignorance of established standards. You can't screw
up like this on accident. Back when they still didn't have much market
share, I guess they had to fix MSIE to make it compliant with HTTP 1.x, now
I suppose they are arrogant enough to feel that they can break it again.
--
Sam
