Hello
I’m using Firfox to view pdf documents.
But there is one glitch when I click File>Open_File
in the address bar (Name of the file) there is a dot at start.
How to change that so it is clear.
see yourself at the screenshot
Your observation is the same as mine, but I can’t see a problem. Either you ignore it completely by using the list above and clicking throug the directories until you click the file you want to open, or you start typing which, as the dot is pre-selected, will replace the dot with what you type without any extra action to be done.
Not that I understand the existance of that dot there, but it does not do anything adverse imho.
BTW, you should upgrade away from 12.2. It is unsuported.
I just tried that, nothing happens, the dot just disappears. It is weird, though. The dot is usually to specify the current directory, isn’t it? That’s what it’s for in the cli, anyway.
The ‘.’ also separates the ending from the rest in filenames. And that’s more likely the case here, since it is the filename input field. 
But IMHO this looks like a bug. (a harmless one though)
I’m not getting that. I just see an open entry area. I’m not sure what is different.
Do you think it can be changed somewhere (e.g. about:config)?
I can’t see it in about:config but I might be blind
I’m just “happy” I’m not alone in this issue.
I don’t think so.
This rather looks like a bug than an intended feature that can be turned on and off.
Btw, I tried to rename the ~/.mozilla directory (to start with a completely fresh profile), and that issue is still there.
Maybe it’s somehow related to the KDE integration?
If you set ui.platform_file_picker to false in about:config, this issue disappears. Firefox uses its own file dialog then and not KDE’s.
I have yet to try whether the problem exists in GNOME as well.
I suspect that you meant “ui.allow_platform_file_picker”.
That’s at “true” for me, yet I don’t have the “problem”.
Hmm, that’s interesting. I happen to use several different firefox profiles. I don’t have “problem” in my main (default) profile, but I do have it in some others.
Here’s what I am noticing.
When I use open-file, if the “.” appears, then the directory shown is my profile directory. If the “.” does not appear, then the directory shown is not the profile directory.
It looks as if “.” is the default directory. But if you change directories while searching around for the file to open, then it remembers the most recently used directory and does not pre-select “.”.
(I think this means that it is not a bug, it is a feature 
)
I was already afraid of that, but I fail to see what the intended gain is.
Yes, that’s what I meant.
Sorry for the mistake.
When I use open-file, if the “.” appears, then the directory shown is my profile directory. If the “.” does not appear, then the directory shown is not the profile directory.
I cannot completely confirm this.
When selecting “Open File…” the first time, the ‘.’ appears, right. But the current directory is shown, not the .profile directory (you meant ~/.mozilla/firefox/xxx, right?), for me ~/kdenlive/projects atm, because I started Firefox from a shell.
It looks as if “.” is the default directory. But if you change directories while searching around for the file to open, then it remembers the most recently used directory and does not pre-select “.”.
You’re right.
So the ‘.’ would really mean the current working directory.
(I think this means that it is not a bug, it is a feature
I still think this is a bug (in the KDE integration apparently), because of two reasons:
- It doesn’t happen with ui.allow_platform_file_picker=false
- The “.” is in the filename input field, as already mentioned. And what sense would it make to pre-fill this with ‘.’ (as in the current directory)?
Okay. I also start firefox from a shell script. So I just checked, and my shell script does, indeed, cd to the firefox profile directory (where it does some cookie cleanup before starting the browser).
I tried in GNOME now and there it doesn’t happen either.
So I think this is what happens:
Firefox seems to call the file picker dialog with ‘.’ as URL (meaning it should show the current directory), but KDE’s file dialog apparently doesn’t like that and treats ‘.’ as file name. It shows the current directory by default anyway.
When I looked at openSUSE’s KDE integration patch, I noticed that this patch actually sets the URL to ‘.’ before determining further which one to pass.
I then removed this from the patch.
When testing my new MozillaFirefox package, that ‘.’ did not appear in the file dialog anymore. But unfortunately this had an unintended side-effect as well: Firefox now always opened the home folder when showing the dialog the first time, instead of the current directory.
So I reverted back to the original package from the update repo, and guess what?
I suddenly cannot reproduce this any more!
That ‘.’ is now gone for good here! 
But: I found a setting in about:config now: browser.open.lastDir
If I set this to “.” or reset it to the default, I can reproduce the issue when restarting Firefox.
So set this to some directory ("/home/user" f.e.) that you want to have shown by default in the dialog when you start Firefox the next time.
Btw, here Firefox remembers the last opened directory in the dialog now even across restarts (in that option). I don’t think it did that before…:\
It has been doing that for me, and for at least several years.
Hm, I renamed ~/.mozilla/ to start completely fresh, and it still does remember it now.
I’m not really sure whether it did before. When I tried to reproduce this thing, it didn’t seem to AFAICR.
But why does this thread even exist then?
The OP surely must have opened some file upto now, according to his post(s)?
As soon as you opened any file, the filename field should never show the ‘.’ again.
The patch only sets the URL to ‘.’ if it was empty. And this should only happen when you select open file the first time, because browser.open.lastDir is set to the corresponding directory then (it is empty by default).
At least that’s how I see the situation now.
I still think this is a bug (or better a minor glitch). I’m not sure whether it’s worth reporting though.
That’s not so obvious.
I have 5 firefox profiles. On three of them, I see the “.”.
On one of those showing the “.”, I do often open a file, but I do so with the “file:///path/to/file” format (because it is always the same file path, and I have it bookmarked). So that does not get recorded as a file open.
My main use of the “open” menu is when I have downloaded an extension for my default profile, and want to install it. It remembers the directory where I download, though at present it is remembering a different directory.
Well, I was indeed wondering if there’s something else that might prevent the directory from getting remembered.
As I said, I do seem to remember that it didn’t get saved here before.
For the OP, setting the browser.open.lastDir option should be a valid work-around though. Even if Firefox doesn’t remember the last used directory, it should show the one you set with this option, and not set the filename to ‘.’.