[tor-talk] 'external application is needed'

[k e bera]

On Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:37:22 +0000
andrew at torproject.is wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 04:42:52PM -0800, keb at cyblings.on.ca wrote 0.9K bytes in 0 lines about:
> : This is some kind of bug in TorBrowser/TorButton/Firefox.  It will actually just download (using your existing Firefox-Tor connection) and save the file when you click "launch application".
> 
> Actually, it's on purpose. See 3.1.3 in
> https://torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/#proxy-obedience,
> 
> "External apps, if launched automatically, can be induced to load files
> that perform network activity. In order to prevent this, Torbutton
> installs a component to provide the user with a popup whenever the
> browser attempts to launch a helper app. 

When a user clicks on the orange Download button on the torproject.org website, they are clearly intending to download not launch, so perhaps it is a usability bug in the website.  The external application popup does not occur when a user right-clicks the button and selects "Save Link As".