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When I do "Save Page As" on many Web sites, and get the dialog, and then change directory locations, the page title is blanked out. Can I stop this?

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Firefox 52.5.2 ESR edition running on openSUSE Linux.

Scenario: I want to save a Web page using "Save Page As"

For some sites when I do this the Save Page As dialog comes up with the title of the Web page in the Name field. If I then change the directory location where I want to save the page, the Name field continues to hold the title of the Web page. This is my expected behavior.

For OTHER sites when I do this, and change the directory location, the Name field is instantly blanked out and I have to manually enter the page title. This is incredibly annoying. This even happens on some Amazon pages where it never used to before.

Is there any way I can stop this from happening and consistently have the Web page title in the Save Page As Name field whether or not I change directories.

Firefox 52.5.2 ESR edition running on openSUSE Linux. Scenario: I want to save a Web page using "Save Page As" For some sites when I do this the Save Page As dialog comes up with the title of the Web page in the Name field. If I then change the directory location where I want to save the page, the Name field continues to hold the title of the Web page. This is my expected behavior. For OTHER sites when I do this, and change the directory location, the Name field is instantly blanked out and I have to manually enter the page title. This is incredibly annoying. This even happens on some Amazon pages where it never used to before. Is there any way I can stop this from happening and consistently have the Web page title in the Save Page As Name field whether or not I change directories.

All Replies (14)

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Please Refresh but do this 1st:

then

TEST....... If no issues then Extensions which need to be added back in 1 at a time and tested ..... Or it is your Profile : Make a new one and test ...:

If is your Profile :

Note: Any customization will revert back to default, you will also need to reinstall Extensions.

Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.

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Before I go through this whole process of refreshing, creating new profiles and all that, may I simply ask if the behavior described is indeed the default behavior or is there some setting that I am not aware of to adjust the behavior described?

From the response, I am assuming that the behavior I described is NOT the expected behavior? Is that correct?

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If I wanted to save this web page this would be the default tittle : When I do 'Save Page As' on many Web sites, and get the dialog, and then change directory locations, the page title is blanked out. Can I stop this _ Firefox Support Forum _ Mozilla Support.html Plus you would get all the css and backgrounds and whatever else is used.

As for Amazon I would say they have code in there that try's to block.

I personally would leave it as you say works most of the time. and if sites have some scripts to block that you will have the same result after a Refresh.

Modified by Shadow110

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Telling me how you do it is not helpful.

This behavior I described was not the usual in the past. I'm not sure which version of Firefox it began on, but I've NEVER on Amazon had to retype the page title in the Name field. NEVER.

So if this is not the expected behavior, then I will go ahead and back up my Firefox profile and do a complete reinstall, then reinstall the extensions.

By the way, I should have mentioned the extensions I use:

1) AdBlock Plus 2) Element Hiding Helper For AdBlock Plus 3) HTTPS Everywhere 4) Last Tab Close Button 5) NewScrollBars 6) UBlock Origin

All of which by the way were installed when this was not a problem, with the exception of UBlock.

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So you are very welcome for the incites I brought.

SAFE MODE

In Firefox Safe mode these changes are effective:

  • all extensions are disabled (about:addons)
  • default theme is used (no persona)
  • userChrome.css and userContent.css are ignored (chrome folder)
  • default toolbar layout is used (file: localstore-safe.rdf)
  • Javascript JIT compilers are disabled (prefs: javascript.options.*jit)
  • hardware acceleration is disabled (Options > Advanced > General)
  • plugins are not affected
  • preferences are not affected

TEST

Modified by Shadow110

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So I did a complete removal of Firefox from the system, including deleting the previous mozilla directory and reinstalled it from scratch from the openSUSE repository,

I then executed it without any modifications to the profile, no about:config modifications and no extensions installed.

It still does the same thing: on directory change it clears the Save Page As Name field.

So if this is not the expected behavior, then by definition it is a bug.

Am I correct that this is a bug and therefore nothing can be done? Or is there a workaround that doesn't involve manually entering the page title every time it happens? (Note that as I stated earlier it only happens on various Web sites, including Amazon, on which it has never happened before.)

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If you have a bug, file a bug report. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/ Bug Writing Guidelines : https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/QA/Bug_writing_guidelines

Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.

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My question remains: IS this a bug? Can someone confirm that this is a bug?

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richardstevenhack01 said

My question remains: IS this a bug? Can someone confirm that this is a bug?

No idea, you decide by reviewing the guidelines. Or live with the issue as you said, determine if it is a Linux issue by going to the forum of your flavour, or is it a A/V security issue as some A/V programs do so go to their forums and look and ask.

This is not the only place. Nor is it the only thing you run.

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So far the responses I'm getting here amount to "no idea".

This clearly is not helpful.

It's about what I expected from this "support".

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Please remain friendly on this forum.

According to the submitted info for your question, you use the Save Page WE 8.3 add-on. Looking at its revision info, this issue was present in version 4 ("Fix: File name in save dialog was empty when saving web page with no <title> element. Fixed."), as well as several other issues with naming, prefixes and iframes, even up to 8.3 ("Fix: View Saved Page Info did not work correctly with pages saved by 7.5 or earlier versions. Fixed.").

Are you absolutely sure this behavior does not occur when that add-on is disabled, not installed, or by testing in Safe Mode or (recommended) in a clean profile without any add-on as suggested?

Creating a clean test profile can be done in less than 20 seconds by visiting about:profiles and clicking Create a New Profile. Then set that as default profile using the Set as default profile button, restart Firefox and try to reproduce. If that works, an add-on or theme (!) is the culprit. If not, please provide URLs here for pages you see the issue for so we can have a look.

For the normal mode: given that - as I understand it - the add-on is able to modify parts of the saved page or their titles, I wonder if the issue would then only occur for bookmarked pages you try to save, so you can remove one first.

All of which by the way were installed when this was not a problem, with the exception of UBlock.

That does not always guarantee they keep working flawlessly, sometimes even by their combinations.

Removing and reinstalling Firefox does not use a new profile, so any add-on, modification and issue will remain afterwards.

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Perhaps I was not clear in my earlier response where I specifically stated I did a complete deletion and reinstall of Firefox and then tested the behavior with NO extensions installed in the new install, and NO other modifications to about:config or anything else. The behavior remained consistent.

You might have missed the part where I said I deleted the Mozilla directory. By this, I referred to the /home .mozilla directory which contains the user profile in Linux. Therefore the user profile was pristine and unmodified other than running Firefox one time to make the test of the behavior.

Therefore the behavior exists without regard to ANY extension. All of the extensions I use (except UBlock) were installed before this behavior began to occur and worked fine since at least the last time I did a new install or upgrade of the OS and Firefox.

It is possible that the behavior began after the last upgrade of the OS and/or Firefox, which would have occurred at the same time. I can't remember when was the last time I upgraded the OS - it was several months ago. It is possible the behavior began at that time.

OpenSUSE does apply "branding" to its version of Firefox but I rather doubt that affects this level of detail. I think that affects only things like providing links to openSUSE supporI Web sites and the like in the Bookmark menu.

I assume that the version of Firefox I'm running is otherwise a standard Linux version.

The UBlock extension was installed AFTER the behavior began to occur and therefore by definition cannot be the cause.

Also, none of this affects bookmarked pages. I do not bootmark pages. These are all pages being viewed for the first time and saved for later reference. The Web sites have been visited before.

One thing I should emphasize is that the Name field is cleared ONLY when a directory change is made. If I save more than one page to the same directory, from either the same Web site or another Web site, the title is inserted in the Name field as expected.

I am wondering whether this has something to do with Firefox's behavior in deciding to change directories on its own when a different Web site is visited. I usually made the about:config mod named browser.download.lastDir.savePerSite Boolean to fix random file save directory changes.

However, note that this mod was NOT made after my reinstall of FIrefox, so whatever behavior is the default was in place.

Nonetheless, it seems to me that Firefox appears to be making a decision on its own having to do with the directory change which has the side effect of clearing the Name field. Perhaps Firefox assumes that a directory change indicates a Name change is going to be made by the user?

By your description of previous bugs related to this issue, it would seem that this is a regression bug.

Is there anything else I might try before submitting a bug report?

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Oh, and let me clarify one more thing...

First, this does not happen on all Web sites. Some Web sites this NEVER happens.

On other Web sites, it consistently happens.

Then there's Amazon (as well as other sites, but Amazon is the best example), on which it never happened before, but once this behavior started it now happens on specific Web pages only. Other Web pages do not exhibit the behavior.

So the behavior appears to depend not only on Firefox's default behavior but on some specific Web page layout issue.

This is why it took me some time to become aware of the issue because I initially chalked it up to bad Web page design - until it started happening on Amazon, where it never used to happen.

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OK, no further response. Bug report it is.