Let's try resetting Firefox's file type associations! Here is how to do so: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/change-firefox-behavior-when-open-file#w_resetting-download-actions-for-all-content-types

Hi, thanks for the suggestion.

I followed the instructions (almost, instead of deleting the handlers.json file I renamed it.) I think the list of applications in there has changed - before there was a jpeg application link, but that's gone now, but pdf still seems to be ask me what to do (I think the default is to open pdfs in FF)

However, the behaviour is still the same - when I click on a png image link it still just opens in FF, doesn't ask me what to do.

The link I'm trying to follow is this one...

http://vtk.1045678.n5.nabble.com/file/t342340/Clip_planes_without_depth_peeling.png

And I've just updated to 59.0.1 and I'm running Windows 10 if they make any difference.

A button by the applications to add an association would be useful, this all seems very opaque. This isn't a deal breaker issue, but it's annoying - I'm opening a file not a website - just let me open the file in the application I want!

Any further suggestions?

Thanks again for the suggestion,

Gavin

Hi Gavin, Firefox normally display certain web-native file types itself rather than treating them as downloads, so that bypasses the download handler list. Considering that 95% of the PNGs you open are embedded in pages, I don't think you would want to change the default.

If it is an ordinary link, you can right-click > Save Link As to download the linked file. Otherwise, perhaps there's an add-on that can help with these links (image downloader).

Thanks for replying, but that doesn't really answer my question. Bear with me for my long post, I've a follow up question at the bottom, about change in FF behaviour.

I'm aware that I can right click and link and save the file. But I've then got to open that file, which is an extra step. Not life or death, just mildly irritating. Quite often if I have a link to an image, I want to open that image and be able to deal with it separately outside of Firefox. If an image is embedded in a webpage, fine, I'm happy for it to be displayed in that page - that's what I would expect. However, when I've a link to a file I don't understand why I can't choose what to do with that file. I don't condier a PNG image to be 'web-native', its an image file, I want to display it in an image editor where I can do all sorts of things with it.

My parallel is I've had to tell Firefox that I don't want it to deal with PDFs, and I don't understand why I can't tell it to simlarly deal with PNG, JPG etc.

I just tried a link to a jpeg image, and in spite of there being a setting in my FF profile which says 'ask me what to do' FF just opens the image and displays it itself. I started this thread because I could see my setting for JPEG image, and wanted the same setting for PNG image (and TIFF etc.)

So now I'm wondering...

- has FF behavour regarding images changed recently? - Did I used to be able to open JPEG, PNG image links externall? - If it has changed, why? I don't understand why giving me fewer options is better for me.

Thanks for your time.

Images that are send with a valid image type (e.g. image/png or image/jpg) by the server are likely displayed in a Firefox tab. Only images that are send with a generic content (e.g. application/octet-stream) or as content-disposition will give an open with download dialog. It has always worked this way in Firefox for content that Firefox can handle internally.

I don't think it's a change. When a site sends an image, it's usually without any special instructions on how to handle it, and Firefox just displays it normally. A site can force a download by setting this header for the image:

content-disposition: attachment

In that case, the settings on the Options page are used.

There's not an easy way to convert a regular link to an image to a download link within the browser. Perhaps there is an add-on solution.

Thanks for your help and the information, if I can summarise...

• Some links to images look like every other link to Firefox, e.g. just like a regular web-page (if such a thing exists), even if they are really just a file - so firefox opens them like any web-page
• So to turn an image into something recognised as 'not just a regular web-page' it has to be specially tagged. If it is tagged Firefox can recognise this and do something different, like save the file or open another application
• It's always worked like this, and because I have the JPEG file type association, at some point Firefox must have come across a tagged JPEG image in order to ask me what to do with it

Is my understanding correct?

In which case I'll just learn to live with it :) When most things just work really well little things like this become the annoying ones.

Thanks again for your assistance

That's a good summary.