There are other options to save a website into only one file. One of these options is to convert the website into a pdf document, another the Mozilla Archive Format add-on for Firefox. The Mozilla Archive Format can be used to save websites either as MHTML (MHT) files supported by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or MAFF multi-page archives.

The functionality is automatically integrated into the Firefox web browser after installation of the add-on. The fastest way to save a website is to press the [Ctrl S] keyboard shortcut which will open the Save As dialog window. Among the available choices are both the MAFF and MHTML format.

The differences between the two formats are the following: MAFF uses zip compression to save one or multiple websites into an archive. This ensures better compatibility and accessibility even on computer systems that do not have access to the add-on as it is still possible to browse and extract the date with any compression software supporting zip files. The MHTML format on the other hand is not compressed, can only save one website per file and is only working with a limited number of web browsers. It is however better integrated into Internet Explorer and could be the choice of the user if Internet Explorer is the target web browser.

The add-on will save the following additional information with each save:

• The original location the page was saved from. This normally matches what is displayed in the address bar of the browser.
• The date and time of the save operation.
• 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 of Firefox, the custom choice is remembered. This allows the document to be displayed correctly when it is reopened from the archive, even if it contains internationalized characters.

The add-on can also be used to convert previously saved websites (e.g. with Firefox’s default Save As function) so that they are better accessible from then on. Mozilla Archive Format is available for download at the Mozilla Firefox website for all Firefox 3.0 to 3.5.x browsers. It can be forced to be compatible with Firefox 3.6.

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The service is therefor not a direct competitor of services like Delicious or Digg but complements them and there is a good chance that users of those services will work with both Iterasi and their primary social news and social bookmarking service.

The copy of the selected page is saved to the Iterasi account that a users needs to use the service. Iterasi is calling this process notarizing.

Add-ons for Internet Explorer and Firefox 2 / 3 are provided after signup which can be used to notarize pages quickly. Firefox users have to add the buttons manually by right-clicking the main toolbar of Firefox and selecting customize from the menu. After that it is just a matter of locating the Iterasi buttons and dragging them on the toolbar.

Four buttons are provided of which only one is really needed. The Iterasi button provides a menu with all options to notarize and view pages. The other buttons are quick access buttons for specific features like notarizing a page.

The user may import bookmarks from Firefox, Delicious or a local file into Iterasi.

After clicking the notarize button a popup appears that is showing a screenshot of the website. Optional information include notes, tags and selecting a folder to store the page in. Tags are suggested on that same page as well.

There is nothing dynamic about this process so far but that comes into play when the user opens the scheduler. The scheduler can be configured to download a new snapshot of a website at a specific interval, for example once a day at 6 pm. Those snapshots are then stored next to the other snapshots that have been taken previously and this is where it becomes much like the Wayback Machine with the difference that Iterasi can save a page more frequently.

Another interesting option is to share snapshots with other users. This can be done in three different ways:

• Email: A simple email form that will send the Iterati page to the recipients
• Embed: Useful for websites, blogs and forums. A screenshot will be embedded that functions as a link to the Iterasi page.
• Short URL: A short url is created that can be used for services like Twitter.

Users who receive the link will see the saved snapshot of the website and not the original one. This has to be this way because websites can change but the snapshot will remain the way it was. Iterasi provides an option to subscribe to public pages of users via RSS News Feed.

Iterasi is currently in public beta. Everyone can register an account and start adding snapshots of pages to the service. No information was available if the service set a maximum file size limit for all stored snapshots.

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WebKut displays the websites in its own browser window and it is possible to navigate websites or use search engines for instance. I was not able to find any limitations yet and all capture requests that I started completed successfully with virtually no delay. Capturing the Ghacks homepage created a 1044×2800 jpg image with a size of 2.5 Megabytes.

The output format can be changed in the program’s options. Available are the two image formats jpg and png plus the Adobe PDF format. The image ratio and image quality can also be defined there. The ratio defines the width and heights in proportion to the original website, a ratio of 50 would reduce the width and height by 50%.

The main problem of WebKut is that it is not integrated in the browser. It’s far more comfortable to capture a website in the browser directly than to use an Adobe Air application, unless you are a masterful copy and paste user.

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You could open every website and save it. This has some disadvantages. First, there is no link structure between the saved pages. If you want to open page 1 you have to find the index file for page 1 which is different from all other pages. Its great for single pages but not great for entire websites or networks.

Before i start with the solution I´d like to point out reasons why someone would like to save a website to a local drive:

1. Fear that the site will be deleted. (Maybe its hosted @ geocities or a similar site, everyone knows that sites tend to come and go pretty fast on free web hosts)

2. For offline browsing. Maybe you don´t have a flatrate and have to pay for the minutes you are online. It could also be that you would like to transfer the website to a pc that has no internet connection. This includes the case that you want to install a new os, e.g. Linux, and have difficulties configuring the internet connection. You could save tutorial sites on your pc before you make the change.

3. You are a collector. This could include everything, most of the time it will be images though.

The tool:

We will be using the freeware tool Httrack which is available for windows, mac os x and linux personal computers. Download it from the official website httrack.com

Every website that you save to your local drive is stored in a project file. The first step after you’ve started httrack is to create a new project by clicking NEXT.

Add some basic information about the project, name and category and the path where you want to save it. I suggest a drive with enough space for all of the files of the website. Please note that you can´t create a new directory in the program itself.

This is the most important options screen for your project. You select an action and add urls to perform this action. If you want to download an entire website select Download web site(s) and add urls to the web address field.

If you only want to download certain file types select Get separated files. You specify the file types by clicking on set options and selecting scan rules.

You can add urls by simply typing one in the text field or by clicking add url. Clicking add url allows you to enter a website you want to download and add login information for that website. Httrack allows you to capture urls as well by using a proxy.

Set Options leads to a projects options page. You can specify lots of information here. Depth of website scan, follow external links, include / exclude files and directories and much more.

The default settings will download all internal websites and refuse to download external websites.
That means if you only want to download a website try the default settings and take a look at the result. Php files will be saved as html.

Links:

Command line guide
Faq
Httrack Forum
Options explained

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