From: Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@usta.de>
Subject: Re: firefox uploads
To: Jan Stary <hans@stare.cz>
Cc: ports@openbsd.org
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2026 17:20:01 +0200

Hi Jan,

Jan Stary wrote on Fri, Aug 28, 2026 at 02:37:55PM +0200:

> This is firefox-154.0p0 on a current/amd64.
> I am having trouble selecting files as uploads
> or as attachments to emails etc.
> 
> This is what happens: I press whatever upload button
> a given page has ("browse files", "attach file", ...)
> and the file selection window appears. It offers Recent
> (empty) in the left bar, and "Other Locations".
> 
> Clicking on Other Locations makes "Computer" (i.e. the / path)
> appear the right frame. Clicking on that goes empty again,
> probably because / is not unveiled.
> 
> WHat is the right thing to do here? How do I make that dialog window
> offer ~/Downloads and /tmp, which are unveiled (rwc)?

Did you try manually typing "/home/hans/Downloads/" and hitting
return into the top right corner of the the file selection window?
At least that is how it worked for file downloads when i last checked
IIRC, even though the top right side of that window offered no clue
that directory names could be typed there.

Please take this with a grain of salt.  Even though i use firefox
for basic web browsing, i never use it for file uploads, and rarely
even for file downloads.  The GUI design of the file selection
window is totally atrocious, very user-hostile.

For file downloads, the obviously much better solution is to
rightclick on the link, select "copy link", then call ftp(1) from
a shell and paste the link as an argument, with the additional
benefits that you can inspect and edit the link before hitting
return (for example, to remove an undesirable QUERY_STRING), that
it is easy to select the output filename with -o, and with the
additional benefit that you are sure no cookies will be sent during
file retrieval.

Yours,
  Ingo