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Firefox saves UTF-8 source data as windows-1252 when using the Save Page As context menu

mmccollum127
mmccollum127
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When viewing UTF-8 encoded xml data in Firefox, if you right-click and select "Save Page As" and save the xml data to a file, Firefox converts the information from UTF-8 to windows-1252. Chrome/Edge don't have this problem. They can both save the data to a file with the UTF-8 encoding intact. This causes a problem when viewing IdP metadata and saving it from Firefox as the metadata gets changed during the file save process.

When viewing UTF-8 encoded xml data in Firefox, if you right-click and select "Save Page As" and save the xml data to a file, Firefox converts the information from UTF-8 to windows-1252. Chrome/Edge don't have this problem. They can both save the data to a file with the UTF-8 encoding intact. This causes a problem when viewing IdP metadata and saving it from Firefox as the metadata gets changed during the file save process.

Chosen solution

I found the answer for anyone else who comes across this. When the dialog opens to save the page as a file, it defaults to "Web Page, complete (*.xml). This saves the data as windows-1252 encoding. Hit the drop down for the "Save as type" and select "Web Page, XML only(*.xml)". This will save the data as UTF-8.

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mmccollum127
mmccollum127 Question owner
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Chosen Solution

I found the answer for anyone else who comes across this. When the dialog opens to save the page as a file, it defaults to "Web Page, complete (*.xml). This saves the data as windows-1252 encoding. Hit the drop down for the "Save as type" and select "Web Page, XML only(*.xml)". This will save the data as UTF-8.