Firefox's file dialogue box runs like crap

[Tom_ZeCat]

I'm so annoyed. One of the Firefox updates has trashed its file dialogue box. For example, when I was in Yahoo Mail, I wanted to write an email and include an attachment. When I used the attachment feature, the file dialogue box popped up, but nothing in the "places" panel would work. I was able to surf to the folder I wanted, but then it was a hassle to select just the one file I wanted. It would select any file the cursor was over.

The dialogue box is not the KDE one. It looks like it's Gnome. It leads me to believe it's one built into Firefox. I know with LibreOffice, you have the choice of using LibreOffice dialogues or KDE ones. Maybe there's some way in Firefox to set it to use KDE dialogues?

[TWPonKubuntu]

I just tried this via my yahoo email account (online access) and it gives me a standard file dialog which are the same as those offered by my Kubuntu installation. It does seem to work as you describe, (broken) and just very slow. I find Yahoo's online interface to be so slow that I almost never use it. An email client may work better for you, I use Thunderbird.

I"m using Kubuntu 14.04 LTS, same as you. Firefox is Ver. 47.0 Mozilla Firefox for Ubuntu, obtained from the Kubuntu/Ubuntu repository.

I don't know (never bothered to try to change) a method of changing the particular look and feel of the various dialog boxes. I am using the one that is offered by the Oxygen style.

[claydoh]

Nope, firefox uses a hard-coded gtk file picker, unless you use a customized/hacked version (look for plazmazilla ppa) which seems to be broken at the moment anyway, in terms of said file picking.

It could be due to the recent overhauls in Firefox not playing nice with the Oxygen-gtk theme, which seems to be occurring a bit recently in various ways.

All I can say is the stock one as present in 16.04 works just fine, which is not using oxygen-gtk.

[TWPonKubuntu]

Claydoh, I've seen some other glitches with FF/Thunderbird lately, which I was able to address via configuration changes. The "tip" box text and background colors in FF were both black. But the file dialog glitch in Thunderbird has been present for some while now. It doesn't get in my way enough to spend time searching for the fix, I'm lazy like that<g>.

Sorry Zecat, I know this doesn't address your problem. I'll check under 16.04 and see if the Thunderbird file dialog works or not.

[edit] I've changed hard drives (same laptop) and Thunderbird under 16.04 LTS behaves nicely, but it is a different KDE theme. The file dialog works well for selecting a file for attachment... No help here, but at least I can corroborate what Claydoh reported.

[edit-2] Yahoo email online also runs well, with no trouble in the file selection dialog for attachments...

[Tom_ZeCat]

Nope, firefox uses a hard-coded gtk file picker, unless you use a customized/hacked version (look for plazmazilla ppa) which seems to be broken at the moment anyway, in terms of said file picking.

It could be due to the recent overhauls in Firefox not playing nice with the Oxygen-gtk theme, which seems to be occurring a bit recently in various ways.

All I can say is the stock one as present in 16.04 works just fine, which is not using oxygen-gtk.

That might be reason enough for me to upgrade. I actually did upgrade to 15.04, but the thing was so buggy, especially with my KVM switch, I got frustrated and reverted to 14.04 LTS. Is 16.04 pretty stable? I've stuck with 14 because of the stability. I actually really liked the new interface of 15.04, but the bugginess just drove me nuts.

Claydoh, I've seen some other glitches with FF/Thunderbird lately, which I was able to address via configuration changes. The "tip" box text and background colors in FF were both black. But the file dialog glitch in Thunderbird has been present for some while now. It doesn't get in my way enough to spend time searching for the fix, I'm lazy like that<g>.

Sorry Zecat, I know this doesn't address your problem. I'll check under 16.04 and see if the Thunderbird file dialog works or not.

[edit] I've changed hard drives (same laptop) and Thunderbird under 16.04 LTS behaves nicely, but it is a different KDE theme. The file dialog works well for selecting a file for attachment... No help here, but at least I can corroborate what Claydoh reported.

[edit-2] Yahoo email online also runs well, with no trouble in the file selection dialog for attachments...

I can live with the different KDE theme. I'm not addicted to 14.04's look. Loved the look of 15.04, hated the bugginess.

[TWPonKubuntu]

<opinion> 16.04 is not ready for prime time. I have it on an alternate hard drive but 14.04 LTS is still my production machine.
I give it another year before it (16.04) is clean enough to trust.

That being said, the reason I changed themes on 16.04 is because I could not read the "transparent" widgets and dialog boxes in the default theme. I found them to be "fuzzy" and tiring to read. YMMV...

My email usage seldom needs attachments, so the problems with Yahoo online email under 14.04 are not encountered frequently enough to push me away. Using Thunderbird avoids the slow Yahoo online interface (I could guess that other email clients will be similarly faster than the online interface, don't know for sure.)

[Tom_ZeCat]

<opinion> 16.04 is not ready for prime time. I have it on an alternate hard drive but 14.04 LTS is still my production machine.
I give it another year before it (16.04) is clean enough to trust.

That being said, the reason I changed themes on 16.04 is because I could not read the "transparent" widgets and dialog boxes in the default theme. I found them to be "fuzzy" and tiring to read. YMMV...

My email usage seldom needs attachments, so the problems with Yahoo online email under 14.04 are not encountered frequently enough to push me away. Using Thunderbird avoids the slow Yahoo online interface (I could guess that other email clients will be similarly faster than the online interface, don't know for sure.)

I guess that's another way around. I could use Thunderbird. I hear you can hook it up to Yahoo these days. I used to use Thunderbird with a regular POP account from my isp.

[Rod J]

I've just been having this same issue with a friend's Firefox 47 (K14.04) this morning. All sorts of weird behaviour in the file navigation dialog. I hadn't noticed the bug in my install (also K14.04, Firefox 47) because I don't often navigate but just save stuff to my default Downloads folder.

Anyway, I found a bug report, initially about the GTK appearance problems but further down a guy had a workaround which seemed to make the dialog box behave itself: Try prefixing "MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1" (without the quotes) to the firefox command so it reads: MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1 firefox %U. It seemed to work on my friends laptop. I'll post a link to the bug report when I can relocate it.

[Tom_ZeCat]

I've just been having this same issue with a friend's Firefox 47 (K14.04) this morning. All sorts of weird behaviour in the file navigation dialog. I hadn't noticed the bug in my install (also K14.04, Firefox 47) because I don't often navigate but just save stuff to my default Downloads folder.

Anyway, I found a bug report, initially about the GTK appearance problems but further down a guy had a workaround which seemed to make the dialog box behave itself: Try prefixing "MOS_USE_XINPUT2=1" (without the quotes) to the firefox command so it reads: MOS_USE_XINPUT2=1 firefox %U. It seemed to work on my friends laptop. I'll post a link to the bug report when I can relocate it.

Thanks you for the info. It's encouraging. However, I don't fully understand you. Is this some kind of code replacement that's done in the preferences?

[Rod J]

Thanks you for the info. It's encouraging. However, I don't fully understand you. Is this some kind of code replacement that's done in the preferences?

Edit the Kickoff menu (right click on the 'K' icon, choose "Edit Applications") find the entry for Firefox and change the startup command from "firefox %U" to "MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1 firefox %U"

If you start Firefox from elsewhere you will need to alter the start command there.

[Rod J]

Ooops, I had the command wrong, it should be: "MOZ_USE_XINPUT2=1 firefox %U". I've corrected it in my previous posts.

[acheron]

Nope, firefox uses a hard-coded gtk file picker, unless you use a customized/hacked version (look for plazmazilla ppa) which seems to be broken at the moment anyway, in terms of said file picking.

It could be due to the recent overhauls in Firefox not playing nice with the Oxygen-gtk theme, which seems to be occurring a bit recently in various ways.

All I can say is the stock one as present in 16.04 works just fine, which is not using oxygen-gtk.

I've been using Arc theme for anything GTK3 for some time, and not had a problem with that file picker yet.

[Rod J]

I found the Bug report I mentioned earlier: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...81/comments/32

[TWPonKubuntu]

RE Thunderbird, there was a time when Yahoo was blocking any email clients, but they changed that several months back, I suspect because they were losing customers. I can now use the built-in wizard to create a local account that links to my Yahoo mailbox, all works fine, with the exception of the file dialog box glitch.

RodJ Thanks for the patch. I'll give it a try after I get some sleep.

[SecretCode]

fwiw I have Kubuntu 14.04 and Firefox 47.0 and file dialogues still seem OK (not great, just OK, same as they have been since the GTK3 debacle).

I am using "Adwaita Elements" GTK3 theme.