General Question

malevolentbutticklish's avatar

What should I use in place of .MHT to archive web pages?

Asked by malevolentbutticklish (2155points) March 26th, 2010
7 responses
“Great Question” (1points)

.MHT files can be e-mailed and viewed as a single file BUT they are a Microsoft technology. What non-Microsoft options do I have? In the past I might have used .pdf but unfortunately .pdf cannot capture many features of a modern webpage.

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boxing's avatar

Safari (Apple), saves web pages in a webarchive format, the filename extension: .webarchive

malevolentbutticklish's avatar

@boxing: Thank you but webarchive (to the best of my knowledge) is ~Apple proprietary just like MHT is Microsoft proprietary.

boxing's avatar

Could I ask why this would be a problem? thanks.

noyesa's avatar

Archiving a website is honestly a bit too complicated for it to be universal and accessible. Most web sites serve up slightly different content for different types of viewers, browsers, operating systems, etc. It’s kind of a dead end if you’re looking to make a living snapshot of a website that can be sent as if it were a package and then viewed on another browsers, especially since AJAX technologies have become so popular. I think these are the primary reasons why there isn’t really a universal format for archiving the content of a site.

I’ve honestly never had an issue switching between MHT or .webarchive files, you just need to know a bit about the client recieving it.

malevolentbutticklish's avatar

@boxing: It is a problem because I try to avoid proprietary formats where possible. Of course a person could successfully live their whole life and never run a program that wasn’t written by Microsoft so it isn’t a problem in the sense that it won’t work.

malevolentbutticklish's avatar

@noyesa: Since I have control of the website I can avoid technologies which make archiving impossible. The javascript within the page can generate slightly different content for different types of viewers, browsers, operating systems, etc. instead of the server.

boxing's avatar

Understood. But let’s just say it isn’t practical to avoid both formats totally for now. Proprietory can become universal, by the way. Some one has to come up with a technology first.

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