Sigh, when will it end? The most userfriendly (Desktop)OS on earth right now still has so many issues. But why wouldn't it, considering the rather large userbase. Hmpf. As Safari does not fit my needs (don't ask) I'm stuck with Firefox (sometimes even Minefield). But every time I click on a document which a helper application is about to open (.m3u, .pdf, etc.), Firefox stores a temporary copy on my desktop. Only that it's not temporary at all, but stays there until I delete it. So after a long browsing session, the desktop is cluttered with not-so-temporary documents. Oh, there's #302433 (opened 07/2005, marked "fixed" while it's actually not) and then there's #374184 (opened 03/2007, still open) but apart from a proposed workaround there really is no solution in sight. Bummer.

Update: A comment in #311292 proposed a new about:config option (browser.download.folderList) to be set to "1", so that downloaded files will temporary go to the system's default download directory. See also Comment #55 in the same report, that suggests to set this default download directory with Camino. Yes, "wow!" indeed. But it worked.