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When I'm browsing with Safari, a download of a file called "mlingos9.html" is started on some sites and I end up with several of these in my download folder. How do I stop Safari from doing this?

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  • If multiple sites are affected, and another browser such as Firefox does not reproduce it, then this sounds like a Safari bug. Have you tried another browser? – bneely Jan 27 '12 at 7:32
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    Are you browsing sites about multilingual OS X that might link to this page?The original URL of the file is downloaded instead of viewed. – Daniel Beck Jan 27 '12 at 7:47
  • @DanielBeck I forgot what page I visited but that is the one that gets downloaded. I tried visiting this link on a Windows machine with Firefox and that one just got downloaded as well. Is there just something wrong with that page? – ihatetoregister Jan 30 '12 at 10:32
  • Yes. It sends the content type application/octet-stream as HTTP header, instead of e.g. text/html, which triggers the download in desktop browsers (it displays just fine on iOS for some reason). So if you click a link to that page, it'll get downloaded. If you were browsing web pages with related topic, the might have been the problem. That's why I was asking about it. – Daniel Beck Jan 30 '12 at 13:48
  • Talked to the owner of this site who told it was hosted by Apple, and that the problem most probably was on their side. Might be because they are closing down MobileMe soon. Could also explain why I saw this on several sites. – ihatetoregister Jan 31 '12 at 14:28
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It's a problem with a specific web page — this one.

It specifies the content type application/octet-stream in the HTTP response headers, which is usually used for files meant to be downloaded — and that's what your web browser does. HTML web pages usually use text/html or similar HTTP headers, never application/octet-stream.

If you were browsing web sites with similar topics that might link to this web page, and you clicked a link, or the web page was included in another web page using a frame/iframe, that's the cause for the downloads.

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I'm the owner of that page. Strangely I have no problems seeing it myself. I am contacting Apple to ask them to fix the header sent by the server.

PS It turns out I was able to fix the problem by replacing that page with a local copy. Something about the one on the server was causing it (and only it) to be served as an application. I have no idea what could have caused that or how the copy of the file on the server got that way. If anyone else does, I'd be interested to hear it.

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  • Specific pages usually don't get rendered like that. Barring a satisfactory response from Apple, perhaps you could ask for assistance on this site? :) – Jason Salaz Jan 31 '12 at 17:52
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    @Jason Thanks for that comment. I should have checked other pages on that server -- that was the only one being served that way. Something had happened to the file itself to cause the server to do that. I replaced it with my local copy and now it is being served correctly. – Tom Gewecke Jan 31 '12 at 20:56

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