why is there a delay when saving files in Firefox?

[Daley]

Hi,
When I click on a link to a file that normally opens in an external
program, I get a prompt asking me if I want to save the file (I
assume you are familiar with the dialog box without me having to draw
it in ASCII).

This behaviour is what I want. I can click 'OK' and I will get the
normal 'Save' dialog.

Recently Fx has begun to add a delay on the 'OK' button so, that not
only until I have clicked on it once the timer starts, and then it
takes some three to four seconds before the button gets enabled and I
can click it (the second time) in order to get this 'Save' dialog box
to open.

The whole thing resembles the functionality you get when you try to
install a new AddOn, a delay until you can install it (for whatever
reason), but it has gotten much worse.

Now to my question: Is there a way to turn that thing off?

I found some setting in config: "security.dialog_enable_delay" which
was set to 2000, but it did nothing after I set it to 0.

I have also tried "Safe Mode." No change.

Any ideas?

If it matters, I use:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12)
Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12

[Mac rumor]

First, set that back to 2000. It prevents certain types of security
attacks. See the "good reasons for this delay link on this page:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Disable_ex...elay_-_Firefox

Since you already tried running in Safe Mode, your problem is probably not
due to a bad add-on.

My best guess is that you can fix the problem by going to Tools -> Options
-> Privacy, and un-checking the "Remember what I've downloaded" option.
Then restart Firefox to see if the problem is gone. Firefox's download
manager seems to slow down as the number of previously downloaded files
grows larger, so the best prevention is to simply tell it to not remember
what was previously downloaded.

If that was already not checked, or the problem still remains, exit
Firefox, go to your Firefox profile, and delete the downloads.rdf file. If
this file became corrupted, it could easily cause the problem you are
experiencing. Firefox will create a new downloads.rdf as needed.

If none of this works, there may be some other type of corruption in your
profile. In that case, create a new Firefox profile and optionally copy
your bookmarks, passwords, cookies, history, etc, over to the new one. You
would also need to install any of your add-ons into the new profile.

[Daley]

First, set that back to 2000. It prevents certain types of security
attacks. See the "good reasons for this delay link on this page:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Disable_ex...elay_-_Firefox

Since you already tried running in Safe Mode, your problem is probably not
due to a bad add-on.

My best guess is that you can fix the problem by going to Tools -> Options
-> Privacy, and un-checking the "Remember what I've downloaded" option.
Then restart Firefox to see if the problem is gone. Firefox's download
manager seems to slow down as the number of previously downloaded files
grows larger, so the best prevention is to simply tell it to not remember
what was previously downloaded.

This seemed to help a little. There is still an initial delay just
when the dialog box shows up, maybe 1/10 of a second, but I no longer
have to click the OK button twice.