This Gamecraft blog now works with Mozilla Firefox.

Over the last couple of days, I received three reports (see recent blog comments) indicating that this site did not work correctly in Mozilla Firefox. The problem, correctly identified by readers, was that the mime type was not set properly at the server (“application/octet-stream” instead of “text/html”). This problem did not appear in Internet Explorer (nor Safari, as far as I can recall), so I had never noticed the issue. Since nothing here changed recently, I am not sure why this was never reported before, but that is beside the point.

Part of the problem is with Blogger, which does not use any file extensions on HTML files published on a remote server, except for the index page (which I probably specified myself with the .HTML extension). Therefore, the default page worked fine, but all links to other pages failed (in Firefox). I personally try to avoid having any files without file extensions, but this is not exactly an error.

The more significant problem was on the server end. It took me quite a while to find the source issue, after several unsuccessful tries with the mime configuration interface. Finally, I discovered a Microsoft Knowledge Base article entitled, Files without Extensions are Mapped to Application/Octet-Stream, which described the problem exactly. Under ‘SYMPTOMS’, this article says, “There is no way to change this behavior in the user interface.” I noted with interest that the entirety of the ‘STATUS’ section reads, “This is by design.”

Anyway, the steps in the article, although slightly inaccurate, provided a successful solution, so this Gamecraft blog now displays correctly in Firefox. I installed version 2.0.0.1 to verify the problem (always the first step in any diagnostic session), and after making the change and clearing the browser cache, everything seems to work properly now. Additionally, I now have the latest version of Firefox installed and ready for testing my other sites as they get updated (though I know that our SophSoft site works now).

I will take this incident to indicate that Mozilla Firefox is now officially a major player in the browser market, and it again emphasizes the importance of proper testing.