Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas)'s ClickOnce with Firefox

  • Thread starter Thread starter Carlos Mendonça
  • Start date Start date
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Carlos Mendonça

Has anyone managed to get ClickOnce to work with Firefox? It seems to me
that it still has the same issues VS 2K5 had.

I appreciate any comments or tips.
 
Well, you could perhaps be a bit more specific about the problem you have so
that we can try to repro (I saw someone saying it was working fine for them
with FireFox 2 and IE). Also what is the FF version you are using ?

Also do you mention the "Orcas" code name on purpose ? (ie. are you using VS
2008 or do you still use a beta release ?)
 
Dear Patrice, thanks for the answer. I'm sorry for not having provided a
more thorough description of the problem earlier. I mentioned "Orcas"
because some people still refer to it by it's codename, but I sure am using
the final bits.

The thing with Firefox is that it, just like with any previous verions of
ClickOnce, doesn't recognize the application/x-ms-application. Because of
that, it asks the user to download the (whatever).application file instead
of running it. For some reason, Firefox is unable to retrieve the needed
files back from the site and the application's startup will fail with a
File-Not-Find-like error log.

I was wondering if there's any site out there hosting a working version of
ClickOnce which doesn't have the issues I've mentioned with Firefox.

I would appreciate any further comments or tips.

Thanks,

Carlos Mendonça
 
Are you trying to send the user's directly to the *.application file
via a link? Or are you sending them to the publish.htm file that got
generated during the Click-Once publish? FF 2.0 should work fine with
the publish.htm file. That file has logic in it to test what browser
you're using and provides a slightly different UI (that works) with
FireFox. BUT, if you're sending the user a link directly to the
*.application file, you're going to have exactly the problem you
describe with FireFox.

Note that a link directly to the *.application file *is* required if
your application expects to receive parameters on the query string and
in that case FireFox will not work. But, if your application does NOT
receive any query string parameters from the browser, then just send
the users to the publish.htm file.

Does that help?
 
Thanks, Mike! Unfortunately, that's not the issue. I'm sending the user to
the publish.htm page. By using FF 2.0, it will provide both the "Lauch" link
which directs the user to the .application file and the "Setup" button which
directs the user to the setup.exe file. Since the system has all
dependencies installed (it works on IE), clicking the Launch link should
work fine, but the all I get is the exact same behavior seen in VS 2K5's
ClickOnce: FF doesn't recognize the extension, prompts me to either Save or
Cancel (the download), I click Save and then Run. It will start the
installation but will eventually fail.

Interestinly, I've tested this scenario in Windows 2000, XP and Vista
machines and it only worked on XP machines. I wonder if this is and issue
with Windows rather than with FF. All of them were running the same FF
version and administrator users.

"Mike {0A6FF490-CF84-4d78-BD85-FF011A0C310C}" <[email protected]>
wrote in message
Are you trying to send the user's directly to the *.application file
via a link? Or are you sending them to the publish.htm file that got
generated during the Click-Once publish? FF 2.0 should work fine with
the publish.htm file. That file has logic in it to test what browser
you're using and provides a slightly different UI (that works) with
FireFox. BUT, if you're sending the user a link directly to the
*.application file, you're going to have exactly the problem you
describe with FireFox.

Note that a link directly to the *.application file *is* required if
your application expects to receive parameters on the query string and
in that case FireFox will not work. But, if your application does NOT
receive any query string parameters from the browser, then just send
the users to the publish.htm file.

Does that help?
 
I am deploying my company's application with VS2008 using ClickOnce. We
upgraded to VS2008 specifically to fix the problem you are talking about.
Since upgrading, we have had no problems, and find it works in Firefox,
Opera, *and* Safari with no problems.

Are you running the most recent version of Firefox? Do you have the
ClickOnce add-in installed (if so, maybe this is causing a problem).

Have you tried using IE to install the application; does it work?

Is Firefox your default browser?

If you set IE to be your default browser and try installing, does it work?

RobinS.
GoldMail, Inc.
----------------------------------------------
 
This article is from 2006, and is true when using VS2005. If you are using
VS2008, it should deploy just fine for Firefox.

RobinS.
GoldMail, Inc.
---------------------------------------
 
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