problem w digital downloads and windows 8

[shopsite_music]

As Windows 8 is getting rolled out, we're starting to get some info
from our customers that ShopSite is having trouble serving digital
download files.

We have Pro 11 sp2 r4

To look into it -

I installed Windows 8

Downloaded an .exe directly from our site (not through ShopSite).
Windows 8 asked me whether I wanted to run or save the file.exe

Then I sent a file to myself from our ShopSite store backend. Instead
of serving the file with an .exe extension, Windows 8 said - What do
you want to do with "Download"? (This was curious, as it did not give
the correct name of the file or extension, just "Download") When chose
to save it and then attempted to run it, Windows 8 could not find a
program to run it with.

This is exactly the same scenario of events that my customers are
reporting with Windows 8 and digital downloads from ShopSite.

btw - I just got a call from our customer service team this morning. They
said customer reports of this issue have increased dramatically this week.

Any fixes that you know of?

Thanks - David

[Jim]

This is probably a security setting in Windows 8, so that people can't download .exe files which could be malicious Try zipping the .exe file up so the download file has a .zip extension and see if that helps.

[shopsite_music]

No, that isn't the issue. I did a direct link to an .exe posted on our site (not through the shopsite interface) and it downloaded correctly, with the correct filename+extension. In addition, Windows 8 recognized the digital signature of the file correctly when it was generated by a direct url link.

This issue only happens with downloading from links that are generated by ShopSite as digital downloads that are attached to an order.

[Jim]

Does it happen if you have a file that is a .zip?

[shopsite_music]

I tried .zip as well as .pdf files on the Windows 8 system - both worked just fine.

.exe files are the problem. Here's a screenshot:


Notice that the windows IE download bar says "Do you want to open or save Download from store.playpianotoday.com" (It doesn't specify the filename or the extension)

[shopsite_music]

I've zipped up all of our .exe files as an attempt to resolve this.

However, when you choose to "Save as..." in Windows 8, ShopSite does not prompt with the filename. It simply says "Download.zip".

My concern for this is that my customers will attempt to download many of their products (music lessons) and each time, because the name is always "Download.zip" instead of a unique fileanem, the files will just be overwritten.

Any workarounds on this?

[Jim]

The easiest solution is to not use Windows 8, since it works in all other versions of windows.

Have you tried Firefox or Chrome on windows 8 to see if the download works properly there? If it does you might put a note on your website that downloads will function better using one of those browsers.

We have an engineer assigned to look into the problem and see if there is something that can be done to improve the functionality. I don't know when/if a fix will be available but it is being looked at.

[shopsite_music]

The easiest solution is to not use Windows 8, since it works in all other versions of windows.

Seriously? This is not reasonable - I don't use ShopSite to serve digital downloads to myself- ShopSite is a commercial program designed to serve digital downloads to our customers. I have no control over which OS they use.

By saying "don't use Windows 8", you are condemning ShopSite to a short lifespan as Windows 8 becomes the OS platform for Windows users.

Also, by saying you are not sure if/when a solution will be available, you are telling us that ShopSite is not commited to being current.

You cannot simply say "don't use the latest OS".

I don't think I'm being unresonable at all. In fact, I'd like to hear from the community on this one - should we just say "ShopSite works, but not in the latest OS?"

There's got to be another solution.

[Jim]

I was just joking about not using Windows 8. I know some users will switch to it, but from the press I've seen it is no going to be adopted as quickly as MS hopes. It is not an OS that will be used by most business but home owners may adopt it. If you do a web search for Window 8 issues you will get a lot of hits with problems with the OS.

ShopSite will try to find a solution for the download issue, but because MS makes their OWN standards and doesn't alway use the generally accepted web standards it is not always possible to work around issues that they introduce. This especially true if an issue is caused by a bug in the OS itself or in the browser included with the OS.

Until we know exactly what is causing the download issue there is no way to predict when a fix will be available. But if a fix can be made it will be released in a timely manner.

[shopsite_music]

Ok. I'm actually really relived that you were joking - we are very happy w/ShopSite and would hate to see it die in the next Windows OS.

I can't stand Windows 8 either - but many of my customers are going to it and I've got to support it.

Hope the engineers get cooking on this one - please let us know when it's fixed.

Thanks -

[dgray]

My store is also getting this problem with customers using IE 10 and Windows 8. IE renames all our digital download exe files to just "download".

This arises from the download URL generated by ShopSite, which is of the form:

https://sales.domain.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/username/sc/download.cgi?key=somekeystring

Internet Explorer had a big problem years ago where it would remove the .exe filename extension whenever the URL included a query string like that.

There was a simple workaround at the time, and it was to add "&filename=filename.exe" which forced IE to name the file correctly.

I just tried appending &name=fred.exe to a sample download URL in IE 10's address bar and although IE still named the download file "download.exe" at least it appended the .exe to the end. The file was then launched correctly by Windows and problem more or less solved.

Until a complete solution is found, or IE is fixed, I request that ShopSite appends "&name=<theactualfilename>" to the query string, to at least stop the majority of support calls with Windows 8 customers. The download file will at least now have the correct extension, even though it is always called download.- Note that subsequent downloads will append (n) after the name, so they won't overwrite previous files.

[dgray]

I found a discussion of this known issue (and why it won't get fixed) from a Microsoft Internet Explorer developer, here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ieinternals/archive/2010/11/22/internet-explorer-may-rename-downloaded-files-if-querystrings-are-present-or-if-run-from-cache.aspx

Apart from adding the bogus query string I mentioned in the last msg, I see that there may also be a solution by adding a Content Disposition Header in your download.cgi script's output. Hope this helps.

~ David

[dgray]

I don't know CGI but I know that in a php download script, headers would be sent similar to the following:

header("Content-type: application/octet-stream\n");
header("Content-disposition: attachment; filename=" . $fname . "\n");
header("Content-transfer-encoding: binary\n");
header("Content-Length: " . $size . "\n");

And the download URL would be constructed like this:

www.somedomain.com/downloadscript.php/somefile.ext?auth=someauthorizationstring

The filename is not only in the Content-disposition header but also in the URL, and I confirm a script like this works fine in IE10 under Windows 8.

Hope this helps

~ David

[Jim]

A new release of ShopSite, 11sp2r5, contains a fix that addresses this issue. Currently only the Linux version has been released, with Freebsd and Windows probably coming next week. The store at store.playpianotoday.com looks like it is running Linux, so contact your host and ask them to upgrade your store to 11sp2r5.

Note that your suggestions may work but since the ShopSite cgis are compiled C there would be no way to implement it in ShopSite.

You can see a list of fixes that are included in 11sp2r5 release at http://support.shopsite.com/KBase/questions/2551 Note that many of the fixes mentioned in the kbase article were already in the 11sp2r4 patches, However, since this is a compete install release and not just patches they were are documented in the kbase article along with some additional fixes.

[dgray]

Thanks Jim, I'm on FreeBSD so I look forward to that release.

~ David