IIS 6.0 and Firefox

I have IIS running on 2003 and Mozilla Firefox clients cannot properly browse the site.
When trying to access the url I get the dialog box
You have chosen to open
which is a: application/octet-stream
from: http://www.....
What should Firefox do with this file?
Open with....
Save to Disk

This only happens on my one web server.
If I use another 2003 server internally it does not have a problem
If I use my XP station which is IIS 5, there is no problem.
So it must be a config issue on my 2003 web server.

David
Thu Mar 31 13:21:28 CST 2005

It sounds like you configured a * MIME Type of "application/octet-stream" on
the IIS6 server or an application mapping that is returning that
Content-Type for the resource, all of which confuses the browser. Remove the
broken configuration and things should go back to normal.

--
//David
IIS
http://blogs.msdn.com/David.Wang
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
//
"David Lewis" <user@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:01fo41p8tl0c7djptcu3tmc8ml0sbmsjth@4ax.com...
I have IIS running on 2003 and Mozilla Firefox clients cannot properly
browse the site.
When trying to access the url I get the dialog box
You have chosen to open
which is a: application/octet-stream
from: http://www.....
What should Firefox do with this file?
Open with....
Save to Disk

This only happens on my one web server.
If I use another 2003 server internally it does not have a problem
If I use my XP station which is IIS 5, there is no problem.
So it must be a config issue on my 2003 web server.

Kristofer
Fri Apr 01 00:05:36 CST 2005

Hi David,

IIS does not look at the client used, so it does not send a different
response if it is IE or Firefox.

The problem seems to be that Firefox does not know what to do with the
file, and therefore asks the user what he/she want Firefox to do. You seem
to send a MIME type of application/octet-stream, and that seems to not be
correct (can't say for sure, because i do not know what kind of file it
is). But if this is a simple HTML file, you want to show up in the
browser, then for sure it is wrong MIME type.

The MIME type can also be customized by code (ASP.NET file for example),
which could be happen in your case.

I think however that this is a problem in your Firefox client. And after
all, it do work on other machines.


--
Regards,
Kristofer Gafvert
www.gafvert.info - My Articles and help
www.ilopia.com


David Lewis wrote:

> I have IIS running on 2003 and Mozilla Firefox clients cannot properly
browse the site.
> When trying to access the url I get the dialog box
> You have chosen to open
> which is a: application/octet-stream
> from: http://www.....
> What should Firefox do with this file?
> Open with....
> Save to Disk
>
> This only happens on my one web server.
> If I use another 2003 server internally it does not have a problem
> If I use my XP station which is IIS 5, there is no problem.
> So it must be a config issue on my 2003 web server.

Corey
Thu Jun 16 08:12:20 CDT 2005

I have recently been having similar errors. Based your posting as well as my personal experience, I think I have tracked the problem (but no solution as yet).

It seems that it may be the IIS Custom errors that Mozilla cannot interpret correctly. I receive my "You have chosen to open...application/octet-stream" message in Mozilla when requesting pages on my IIS server that respond with a "403-4 HTTPS:\\ required". Other people say that are prompted when requesting a directory rather than a particular file in which case the cause may be a "403-? Directory Browsing not allowed" response.

Under IIS, Web Site, right-click Properties, Custom Errors tab you can see a list of error codes and the IIS error pages they link to. All custom error messages that link to the \Windows\help\iisHelp\Common\error-code.htm files seem to generate the application/octet-stream error message in Mozilla. If these custom error message are set to 'Default', then Mozilla displays them correctly (but they are not as nicely designed as the IIS versions).

Also, try this: When prompted by Mozilla with the application/octet-stream message, save the file as a temporary .htm file and open it again in Mozilla (or choose Open With and navigate to Firefox.exe). The page will them display correctly and I reckon it will look like a IIS error message which would partially confirm my reasoning.

If you have found, or end up finding a solution