Introduction
Web archives are a convenient means to preserve web pages. They store all the text, images, and other resources of a web page in a single file. When a web archive is moved or renamed, the saved pages are unchanged.
MozArchiver provides two new options of file type in the Save As dialog box:
Web Archive, MAFF zipped
This option saves one or more pages inside a single MAFF archive. MAFF archives are compressed using the universal, cross-platform ZIP specification for saving multiple files in one archive.
MAFF archives can be opened in the browser. If multiple tabs were saved, opening a MAFF archive opens all the tabs, exactly the way they were when they were saved.
It is possible to view the original location from which the page was saved. The contents of the archive, including any embedded media files, can be inspected and extracted using any ZIP utility.
MozArchiver generates MAFF archives using the fast, native ZIP implementation embedded in the browser. The resulting files are usually smaller than the equivalent MHTML archives, and opening this kind of file is faster.
However, Microsoft Internet Explorer cannot open MAFF files natively.
Web Archive, MHTML
This web archive format, also known as MHT, is used by Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. This option saves a single page inside a MIME HTML file, or MHTML archive.
MHTML files are encoded, not compressed. The encoding usually increases the size of the saved media files compared to the original. At present, the contents of an MHTML archive can be decoded by only a limited number of web browsers, or by using special utilities. However, MHTML archive format has the advantage that it can be shared with those who use only Internet Explorer.
When you save a page as a web archive, the following additional information about the tab or tabs saved is stored in the archive:
- The original location from which the page was saved. This normally matches what is displayed in the address bar of the browser.
- The date and time the page was saved.
- The title of the page, if present.
- The character set in effect at the time the page was saved.
If the character set was changed manually using the View » Character Encoding menu item, the custom choice is remembered. This allows the document to be displayed correctly when it is reopened from the archive, even if it contains international characters.
If you re-save an already archived page to a different file, the date and time saved, and the location of the original archive, are preserved.
After MozArchiver is installed, web archives can be opened as with any saved web page.
On Windows, MozArchiver can create file associations to open web archives by double-clicking the file names in Windows Explorer.
File associations can be controlled from the welcome page that is displayed when the extension is installed for the first time, or when the Refresh File Associations link is selected from the Actions options pane.
In the welcome page, you can choose whether file associations are created, for the MAFF and MHTML formats separately.
File associations are always created explicitly for the current user of the system. In addition, if the current user has administration privileges, default file associations for all users are also created.
File associations are not removed when uninstalling the add-on or the browser itself.