OWA 2010/Firefox 8 and ASHX Attachments
Hello,
We have been using Outlook Web Access 2010 within our organization for a few months now, and have been using firefox to do so. With the latest Firefox 8 update, it seems that certain attachments download as "attachment.ashx". Yes, I said ASHX not ASPX. My research tells me that ashx files have to do with the .NET Framework. It seems that this is only occurring since we downloaded Firefox 8.
Yes, changing the file extension allows us to open the files, and we can set a program to handle the file extension, but that would only apply when the ashx extension is only affecting one file type, but it seems to happen for more than 1 document type. I have experienced this issue with .pdf, .doc, .xls, .docx and .xlsx.
Any ideas as to what would be causing this as of the latest update?
Chosen solution
Hello Everyone,
So I have the long awaited answer to this problem, but can not post it here because it's somewhat technical and in order to represent the problem it is necessary to use some characters that do not encode properly into this post, so I am providing a link to my solution:
http://www.nw-webdesign.com/MozillaHelp894442.php
Cheers :-)
Read this answer in context 👍 3All Replies (18)
Firefox 7 (Win XP here), for example: Firefox 7.0.1 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1 Mozilla Netscape 5.1 (Windows) Win32
Thanks for that... This one did the trick :-) I used it with UAControl to specify the website to use this with. All other sites will still use the default User Agent :-)
Did you worked changing the UA? I'm using OWA 2010 14.1 with FF 7.0.1 UA (on FF 8 installation) and now I can open the attachments, but still detect it as a ASHX file.
I "kind of" got the UA string to work. I say "kind of" because I don't know exactly how much of Oxylatium's string to use (and how to edit it). Note that I'm running Windows 7. When I use the string above, it does have the effect of *not* renaming my filenames to attachment.ashx - BUT - wherever there is a space in the filename, it puts (in place of the space) a "%20". Does anyone know why this is, and how to fix it?
I logged a call with the people who's looking after our servers; I even included the link from titanicfanatic (http://www.nw-webdesign.com/MozillaHelp894442.php); in the end they told me they'll treat this as a browser bug rather than a bug with OWA 2010, they said something similar has happened before with Chrome, so they won't do anything at at the server side for the time being.
Just wondering does anyone know a better way to convince them? Maybe a post in a forum / link with more evidence?
Thanks for your help in advance!
Aside from setting up a network deowngrade for Firefox to version 7, there is really nothing that they can do as only Microsoft has access to the code that affects this. It may be possible to apply some sort of greasemonkey script, but not sure if it would work.
Yes, this was a problem with Chromium 6 (not sure which version it was resolved in), but has been dealt with by Google. They obviously added some sort of verification of these Content-Dispositions that resolves the issue, but it is incorrect as it's Microsoft's job to make sure that their code conforms to the standards so these things don't happen. In other words, Firefox is cracking down on conventions that are incorrect and that is the right way to go about it. This is why Firefox is such a great browser :-) Because it conforms to standards, and makes our lives a developers easier and more uniform.
In terms of proof, have them download the 'Live HTTP Headers' addon for Firefox, this will sniff out all headers that are being sent to the browser, and it's very obvious that it's OWA's fault as it doesn't conform to the standard which was outlined in RFC 2231. You could also maybe have them try a download in IE9 which you think should have no problem since they are developed by the same company (OWA and IE9), but with IE9 becoming a more standards compliant browser, even it doesn't accept this malformed Content-Disposition. Is that really a browser bug, I think not!
Our company has resorted to a network downgrade of Firefox to version 7, and for now, that works for us. We are still, however, actively looking for a better solution to this and will post here if we find that answer.
On my computer, I have remained on version 8 and use uacontrol addon for firefox to spoof the UA as Firefox 7. This is very tricky though as I found out because when I set my mail domain as the site to send the above UA (whole string) it forces me into the light version of OWA (which I don't like at all). The work around for that is to log in then turn on the UAControl for the domain. Too tricky for the average user I think.
Re: titanicfanatic
Thanks for your detailed explanation :)
We thought of downgrading as well, but apparently people in the past had issues with their Firefox profiles if they download from a higher version (I personally can't confirm this). I've tested the latest Firefox 9 Beta 2 and it looks like Mozilla won't take Google's approach to help us out with the issue either. The UAControl works fine but as you have mentioned, it requires the user to make the switch at the right time, which will generate a lot of phone calls for us.
Right now the only thing I can do is to wait and see who can help us out; either Mozilla with some sort of workaround in their Firefox 9 or Microsoft releasing a patch to fix the issue.
Tested with FF 8.0, Windows 7 32b and the extension UAControl with UA "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1" and it doesn't work with OWA 14.1.339.1
Uninstalling FF 8 and installing Firefox 7 to the enterprise domain (+- 2000 PCs) until we have a solution :(
This is the UA that worked for me...
Firefox 7 (Win XP here), for example: Firefox 7.0.1 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1 Mozilla Netscape 5.1 (Windows) Win32
You will need to whole string, and it's ok if you are not running WinXP you can still use this UA. I used it on my Win7 64bit pc at home with success.
Look here, now it's marked as a regression. Maybe solved for 9.0 or 8.0.1 ? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=703015
I've just tested the Firefox 9.0 Beta 3; I think Mozilla have kindly put in a workaround for us!
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/9.0b3-candidates/build1/
Nothing works for me!
I am so sick and disgusted by the continual incompatibility issues with Apple and Microsoft systems. These corporations cost billions of dollars in productivity loss and workplace frustration. Would we allow 2 electricity grid systems, 2 water systems, to operate simultaneously getting water and power through duplicate hardware, paying over and over for superfluous products because of corporate greed?
There is a 2nd workaround after bug 703015, see: Bug 704989 - add workaround for broken Outlook Web App (OWA) attachment handling.
@tjkr: even the Firefox 9.0 Beta 3 didn't work for you? Firefox 9 should be out by 20th Dec.
And another solution--I substituted Google Chrome today for Firefox. I hated doing this but I have too many downloads from Outlook to deal with the renaming, etc. Will switch back when Firefox bug is fixed...
I loaded Firefox 9.0 beta 6 and the attachments load properly
That is the result of fixing this bug.
- bug 704989 - add workaround for broken Outlook Web App (OWA) attachment handling
I found the simplest solution for me was downgrading to Firefox 7