[Bug 228988] Re: Firefox can display a page with the wrong default encoding

[Bug Watch Updater]

Launchpad has imported 2 comments from the remote bug at
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=608609.

If you reply to an imported comment from within Launchpad, your comment
will be sent to the remote bug automatically. Read more about
Launchpad's inter-bugtracker facilities at
https://help.launchpad.net/InterBugTracking.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 2010-10-31T17:23:52+00:00 A-pirard-hotmail wrote:

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.11) Gecko/20101013 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.11
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.11) Gecko/20101013 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.11

Full, detailed story:  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/228988

Since I'm using it, I see Firefox (2.X and 3.X) *sometimes* display pages using the wrong character encoding. Sometime a page will display correctly, later the same page won't, without any apparent reason, nor special action. However, I have found a procedure that's reproducible on all my systems, including freshly installed, e.g. Ubuntu Karmic as is,  but unfortunately not on all other ones (mainly US ones).
display http://atilf.atilf.fr
Click 'Entrez dans le TLF'
Fill in search field: 'erreur', click 'Valider 1'
Select the word 'ERREUR', a window pops up
Click on 'le TLF1' in that window
The pop up window invariably displays ISO8859-1 as UTF-8 as shown in
http://launchpadlibrarian.net/55706907/Screenshot-Mozilla%20Firefox.png

See more details at the Ubuntu launchpad URLs.
Sorry if the questions I was asked there made that report a mess.

Side notes:

It is a bad idea to specify the character code of a Web page in the
envelope (SMTP or HTTP MIME), because it puts the burden of modifying
the page to someone who stores it to a file instead of to whoever wrote
the page in the first place.

Any feature allowing the user to correctly display a bad page is not
only inciting the Web authors to continue writing more bad pages but
also towards the users displaying good pages the wrong way.  The Web is
full of horror stories by people not having understood character sets


Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. display http://atilf.atilf.fr
2. Click 'Entrez dans le TLF'
3. Fill in search field: 'erreur', click 'Valider 1'
4. Select the word 'ERREUR', a window pops up
5. Click on 'le TLF1' in that window
The pop up window invariably displays ISO8859-1 as UTF-8 as shown in
http://launchpadlibrarian.net/55706907/Screenshot-Mozilla%20Firefox.png

Actual Results:  
http://launchpadlibrarian.net/55706907/Screenshot-Mozilla%20Firefox.png

Expected Results:  
same after forcing ISO8859-1

Thanks.

Reply at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/firefox/+bug/228988/comments/66

------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 2010-11-27T17:47:34+00:00 Nickolay Ponomarev wrote:

Assuming that in step 4 by "select" you meant double-click the word in
red, I can't reproduce on Mac, neither using 3.6.12, nor using Firefox 4
nightlies.

This is the page that opens in a frame in the pop-up: http://194.214.124.200/dendien/scripts/tlfiv5/displayp.exe?18;s=atilf_40_2841007530;i=ft-4-2.htm;;
It doesn't send the charset in HTTP headers at all and doesn't specify the charset in the HTML, as far as I can see.

Can you reproduce using a clean profile? <http://support.mozilla.com/en-
US/kb/Basic+Troubleshooting> With a build from mozilla.org? What's
selected in View -> Character Encoding -> Autodetect?

Reply at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/firefox/+bug/228988/comments/71


** Changed in: firefox
       Status: Unknown => New

** Changed in: firefox
   Importance: Unknown => Medium

-- 
Firefox can display a page with the wrong default encoding
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/228988
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Mozilla
Bugs, which is subscribed to firefox in ubuntu.