I use the utterly useful XAMPP from Apache Friends for local development environment. Recently, however, I came across the strange behavior in which everytime I try to open a certain (not all) php page via the Firefox, it will try to download the file (the “Open With/Save As” popup window opens) instead of executing it. This is despite the fact that I’m opening it correctly (apache running fine, no error logs, accessing with “http://localhost/” instead of “c:/xampp/”). An it gets even weirder because I am dead sure the same page opens flawlessly just a few days before.

After two days of looking around, I finally found the cure: clean the browser cache!

Now, I don’t have any idea why this works, but it does. I’m happy, and I hope if you came across the same problem, this might help you as well.