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Handling .MSI files

johnwoo3
Making moves

Firefox opens .MSI (Microsoft Installer) files as if they were text files, but Google Chrome recognizes the .MSI extension and offers the downloaded file for saving. 

Is there a fix for this?

John Woodgate
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

jscher2000
Leader

Hi John, that should never happen unless the web server -- being unaware of the proper Content-Type for a .msi file -- told Firefox it was a "text/plain" or "text/html" file. Unfortunately, it is difficult to think of a way to work around that kind of configuration issue because Firefox doesn't base its download handling decisions on file extensions so much as Content-Type headers.

I created an add-on to help with similar issues, but it isn't pre-configured for MSI because it wasn't something anyone mentioned as a problem. It is possible to add new Content-Type overrides; I have an explanation page in my page here: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ext/content-type-fixer.html (you'll see it when you get to the "Roll Your Own" section).

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2 REPLIES 2

jscher2000
Leader

Hi John, that should never happen unless the web server -- being unaware of the proper Content-Type for a .msi file -- told Firefox it was a "text/plain" or "text/html" file. Unfortunately, it is difficult to think of a way to work around that kind of configuration issue because Firefox doesn't base its download handling decisions on file extensions so much as Content-Type headers.

I created an add-on to help with similar issues, but it isn't pre-configured for MSI because it wasn't something anyone mentioned as a problem. It is possible to add new Content-Type overrides; I have an explanation page in my page here: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ext/content-type-fixer.html (you'll see it when you get to the "Roll Your Own" section).

johnwoo3
Making moves

Thank you very much.

John Woodgate