[Mod_gzip] MSIE download component + gzip bug

Sat, 19 Oct 2002 18:06:19 -0500

Hi Walter,

It seems VERY interesting.. Could you give us as many details about this
effect as you have? Instantly, I can not understand what is going on in this
situation: Is that downloader a (standard) plug-in for M$IE? Looks like this
way.. Does it use the parent browser to request data, or it creates the own
socket? Does server receive that request (and how it looks like)? What
happens next?

Thanks,
Slava

----- Original Message -----
From: "Walter Hop" <wh@slik.org>
To: <mod_gzip@lists.over.net>
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2002 8:12 AM
Subject: [Mod_gzip] MSIE download component + gzip bug

> Hi all,
>
> I've been experiencing trouble with mod_gzip in combination with IE6 and
> the Microsoft proprietary downloader component that is included with IE
> since 5.0.
>
> Background: The component allows you to download a text file from the
> server with HTTP and return it to Javascript with a callback function. I
> use this functionality to create new layers and load them with content on
> the fly. Here is the example from MSDN (first hit for "startDownload" on
> google):
>
>   <HTML XMLNS:MSIE >
>   <MSIE:DOWNLOAD ID="oDownload" STYLE="behavior:url(#default#download)" />
>   <SCRIPT>
>     function onDownloadDone(s) { alert (s); }
>   </SCRIPT>
>   <P>Click <A HREF="javascript:oDownload.startDownload('download.htm',
>                     onDownloadDone)">here</A> to download this page.
>
> In recent IE6 versions this component seems to have problems with gzip
> content-encoding. Installing mod_gzip 1.3.26 on Apache 1.3.27 rendered the
> downloader broken for IE6 visitors: for some downloaded files, the
> component just never invokes the callback, as if the server did not return
> a response. When I set "mod_gzip_on No" in the affected VirtualHost and
> restart Apache, the component works without any problem.
>
> The component exhibits this behavior on the following versions:
>
>     6.0.2600.0000
>     6.0.2800.1106.xpsp1.020828-1920
>
> Unfortunately I do not have older versions available for testing.
> It is not really a huge issue since the IE downloader component is fairly
> "underground" and not standardized, although I don't know if the failure
> might be a telltale for any other gzip content-encoding troubles in IE6.
>
> My workaround was to add a new extension in Apache (.htmlx, .phpx) with
> appropriate types/handlers and exclude those extension from mod_gzip
> compression; then I made sure to only download .htmlx, .phpx pages with
> this component.
>
> If mod_gzip developers or anybody else are interested in some testcase
> files or know how I should submit this to Microsoft let me know. For now
> this message is just a "heads up" for anybody using the component with
> mod_gzip on the server side.
>
> cheers,
> Walter (satisfied mod_gzip user)
>
> --
>  Walter Hop <wh@slik.org> | +31 6 24452020 | PGP keyid 0x84813998
>
> _______________________________________________
> mod_gzip mailing list
> mod_gzip@lists.over.net
> http://lists.over.net/mailman/listinfo/mod_gzip
>