Wow, this time it attached the image, whoopee.

Since posting, I have started FF in safe mode, rebooted it a few times, etc. Didn't help. I have not tried a clean reinstall b/c Waterfox and Tor do the same thing. The problem is something fundamental in FF and its offshoots.

I don't like Chrome at all, for many reasons, and Vivaldi is based on Chromium, also. Opera, too, I think. But FF has to be able to load webpages that they will load.

Is that screenshot how the page is supposed to look, or the incorrect version? When I open this page in Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, I get a page that looks identical to the screenshot you attached (with the "sorry, this listing sold" message), so I'm not sure I understand what the problem is.

One possibility is that Chrome and Vivaldi are showing you an older, cached version of the page (perhaps before the item was sold?). If you clear the cache in the Chrome settings, does the appearance of the page change?

I get the same redirect in both Firefox and Chrome, viewing from California if that matters.

The screenshot below is what I get with Vivaldi. The page is not cached, it is still available on Reverb. But for some reason I cannot figure out, FF and its variants all redirect away from it (almost like FF assumes I couldn't possibly be interested in an expired listing) and show me live listings.

Either PDF it or screenshot it before it's too late. That page is on borrowed time!

BTW, my install of FF is brand new, I have no extensions and never have installed any -- keeping FF pristine, as it were.

jscher2000 said

Either PDF it or screenshot it before it's too late. That page is on borrowed time!

Actually, I bought that guitar and my goal was to download the pics as jpegs, for reference. When using Vivaldi or Chrome, I can only download them as WEBP files (none of the WEBP workarounds worked for me), which are not very useful. FF will show them to me as jpegs, since it does not support WEBP.

[Commercial sites like Reverb use both jpeg and WEBP images b/c of all the browsers that do not support WEBP.]

Hence, my quandary. The only browsers that will open the completed listing will only give me WEBP images. And FF would give me jpegs, but redirects away instead of opening the requested page.

This is a real FF deficit... The page in question exists and is easily opened with chromium-based browsers like Vivaldi. This is something deep in FF, since all the FF variants I tested do the same thing as FF. I dearly love Waterfox, but of course it has the same problem.

I have googled the problem and tried numerous purported fixes in about:config and then rebooting the browser. None of the problems they others were addressing were quite the same as mine, and none worked. I am beginning to wonder if there even is a fix for this issue.

Again, FF is directing away from the requested page but NOT to a scam page -- the redirect is to Reverb.com itself and shows me actual, live Reverb listings for the same model guitar. Therefore, this is not malicious or a hijack.

FF for some reason thinks the requested page is not retrievable (or perhaps, not worthy of being opened) and shows me current listings as some sort of consolation prize.

If you can view the Webp images in individual tabs, you could screenshot them and save in the format of your choice. Obviously time-consuming.

I wasn't able to view the original page in either Firefox or Chrome; both redirect for me. This isn't caused by the browser's subjective interpretation of the content: the server is sending a 302 response with the new URL.

I noticed in your Vivaldi screenshot that you seem to be logged in to the site, and in your earlier Firefox screenshot, you weren't (header has "Sign up Log in"). I don't have an account, so I can't test whether that explains the difference.

jscher2000 said

If you can view the Webp images in individual tabs, you could screenshot them and save in the format of your choice. Obviously time-consuming. I wasn't able to view the original page in either Firefox or Chrome; both redirect for me. This isn't caused by the browser's subjective interpretation of the content: the server is sending a 302 response with the new URL. I noticed in your Vivaldi screenshot that you seem to be logged in to the site, and in your earlier Firefox screenshot, you weren't (header has "Sign up Log in"). I don't have an account, so I can't test whether that explains the difference.

This is why two heads are better than one... and better yet if mine is not one of the heads. I was working from two different Reverb accounts and didn't connect the fact that each browser was going to the completed listing page for the account logged in but not for one not logged in.

Thanks very much for the help. We can consider this case solved.

By the way, I just read that Firefox 65 will start accepting WebP images:

https://www.ghacks.net/2018/11/02/firefox-65-supports-googles-webp-image-format/

To disable it, you could try this when the time comes:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful or accepting the risk.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste webp and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the image.webp.enabled preference to switch the value from true to false

That preference is present in the current "Nightly" development version of Firefox 65 but could change by the time of release next year.

See also;

• Bug 1294490 - (WebP) Implement WebP image support

(please do not comment in bug reports
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html)

WebP screenshot from current Nightly build. https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/gallery1 https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/gallery2 https://www.gstatic.com/webp/gallery/5.sm.webp