Save any webpage as a single file in Chrome or Firefox
SingleFile is a cross-browser open source extension for Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera to save any webpage you come across as a single HTML file.
All modern web browsers come with options to save webpages; all you have to do is press Ctrl-S to save the webpage to the local system. While that works okay most of the time, it is not optimal for many use cases as a folder with required files is saved for each HTML document you save in the browser.
Internet users have other options when it comes to saving webpages. From capturing screenshots of the entire webpage to using extensions like the excellent Mozilla Archive Format add-on. The latter is not compatible with Firefox 57 on the other hand.
SingleFile
SingleFile is a browser extension for Firefox, Chrome and Opera that you may use to save any webpage as a single HTML document on the computer you are using.
Installation and use of the extension is straightforward. It adds an icon to the browser's main toolbar that you activate when you want to save the active page to the local system.
The saving process does not take long and you end up with a single HTML document on your system that you can open in any modern browser. The author suggests that you scroll down the page to make sure that elements that get loaded when you reach the part of the page get included in the saved document.
The document contains images and CSS style information and other information. Some page resources such as scripts or video resources are excluded from the save process by default. The SingleFile options provide settings to unlock these and make other customizations.
Image files get saved in the document as data:image files so that they are included automatically.
A right-click on the SingleFile icon displays context menu options to save all tabs, all unpinned tabs, or the selection as individual HTML documents.
SingleFile supports auto-save functionality. You can enable it for a single tab, all unpinned tabs, or all tabs. When activated, SingleFile will save webpages that match the selection rules automatically after they have been loaded or before they are unloaded.
Auto-saving unlocks some interesting options; you can save all documents you open while you use the browser; useful for research, keeping a history of your activity, or just archiving purposes.
Tip: you may use the shortcut Ctrl-Shift-X to save the current tab or the selection of tabs automatically.
Options
The options of SingleFile are extensive. You may enable the saving of scripts, video and audio sources, frames, and HTML imports there under Page content and Page resources.
Other options include setting a maximum size for saved pages, disable the removal of alternative fonts and unused font rules, and enabling the saving of the RAW page.
Closing Words and verdict
SingleFile is an excellent browser extension for Chrome, Firefox and Opera. It may work in other browsers as well that share code with Firefox or Chromium but I have not tested that.
The extension puts all required files that a webpage needs to display its content in a single HTML document so that you end up with a single document on your local system for each webpage you save to it. The HTML documents can be loaded in any web browser to display the local copy of the archived webpage.
The quality of the output is excellent and it even includes any modifications made by user extensions or styles as well.
Now You: Do you save webpages frequently or regularly? (Thanks Tom)
This is an excellent extension that I use frequently and specifically to avoid the separate folder. I used to use scrapbook which was also excellent, but went the way of the dodo bird when firefox underwent a major update some time ago.
A couple caveats for this extension:
1) While it is reasonably fast, many times the save process is very slow on my system.
2) It can be subject to save errors–occasionally frequent, but it does alert the user to such errors.
Thank you for the wonderful tool.
I forgot to mention I haven’t figured out how to include the original web address in the saved file.
If anybody can help with that, it would be appreciated.
This is an amazing extension. I feel sort of emberassed not having used this mechanism earlier. I remember 10 year ago I used to save web-pages in mhtml files but for some reason I switch, I think firefox stopped supprting this format out of the box IIRC. I’m glad there’s now an addon that makes saving web pages worthwile again.
SingleFile is a great tool. I use it many times per day (several times per hour) when I am going though my email and encounter a lot of messages from gHacks or any of the other lists I subscribe to.
I just DLed SingleFileZ and will be testing them in parallel over the next week or more. Waterfox has been around for years, so I am not surprised that SingleFile(Z) might not have worked with Waterfox in 2018.
In mid-2020, I find that all of my favorite Firefox extensions work in Waterfox. Of course, made Waterfox my default browser two or three months ago, so cannot really compare how add-ons run under both browsers anymore.
The most convenient part of of SingleFile is that it does not store parts of the page as a separate folder with a similar filename. That means that if you often save pages from Ghacks and want to replace the suggested file name with the same name plus today’s date tacked on the end before the extension, you do not have to rename a file and a folder each time. Windows pairs them up by filename. having only one file per Webpage saved is a time saver and also reduces the clutter in the directory you save the Webpages to.
FractalZ
Hi,I saved page with “save selection”. So there is blank (empty) . How can I delete it?
How can I view the resulting HTML files quickly, without opening the individual html files ?
(At present I load the individual html files with my browser, but this is very slow.)
Online editor?
is there a way to format the file name to read “Page-title” followed by publication date (or even date last modified?) not looking for current date looking for published, thanks!
What a very long thread!
P.S. Have just added SinglePage to my install of Brave Dev version (early days but seems stable enough for me).
I don’t use Google Chrome, but Brave is the next best thing, IMHO. Good that I can now use most Chrome add-ons.
I cannot find info about Chrome extensions here at https://brave.com/download-dev/ Can you tell a bit more about it? Thanks.
A few of the comments here are not worth reading as they show personal anymosity and fights.
The comments on this topic (as well as on many other topics) come from less than 10 person
( let us call them “contributors”). I have the impression some are retired and frustrated individuals who expend their daily small dosis of energy (that anyway gets less as time goes) in exitement.
For those I have the following suggestion: Convert yourself into a single file without any external links, save it and archive it. Do not tell anyone it ever existed.
Lol. Those two in particular. Unbelievable. If Martin let this pass another tech forum is poisoned.
On topic: Singlefile works great in Chrome and not in Waterfox, as mentioned here several times.
@Gidas nice work dude. I got it installed and starred. GJ!
An out-of-band comment to raise once again a technical blog issue.
Email alerts with new comments are sent before comments are moderated. This makes subscribing to comments largerly useless. Attempts to reply to a comment are often fruitless. Would it be possible to withold the email until the comment is published ?
Also, could the link in the subscription request be made clickable ? Thank you for your attention.
@Clairvaux for the unclickable links (which are indeed a pain), the “Text Link” extension solves the problem (if you use Thunderbird or FossaMail).
https://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/textlink/index.html.en
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/text-link/
Unfortunately, Alex, I’m on Microsoft Outlook, but thanks all the same. I just installed Thunderbird to open some .eml files. Gee… what a confusing interface ! Now that looks as a program designed by committee…
Just open an account and stop complaining.
What more, sugar with your coffee?
Just shut the fuck up, Tom Hawack, will you ? Who do you think you are ? I’m laying a polite request to Martin Brinckmann. Why do you feel the need to interfere, and in such a rude manner ? Don’t you get it that some people may actually be interested in their readers’ feedback ?
@Clairvaux, you’re the one who’s being rude and I’m afraid your case is hopeless. You nag, criticize, suggest over and over, you bark about SingleFile’s “i” Infobar when you haven’t even looked at the extension’s options, you complain about heavy pages not managed by SingleFile when they perfectly are … I write a lot, but you talk far too much even before searching, digging by yourself. I think you’d be unhappy in paradise when nagging is you way of life. I’m fed up with you my boy. Remains the fact a blog is a public area and that commenting is not interfering : your lack of education is as notorious as your damn character.
Forget it. You and i won’t be pals. But if you write nonsense I’ll have to interfere.
@ Tom Hawack
No, it’s you who are being extremely rude here, and you’re trying to lay the blame on me on top of that. I would say : once again. Other people have made the remark to you. Maybe you could think it over.
I made a perfectly legitimate suggestion to Martin, regarding his blog’s usability, and it was extremely unsavory, childish and obnoxious of you to pretend and answer on his behalf, especially given the snarky tone and the lack of substance of your put-down.
Also, you make Martin look bad, because whatever his take on my request, he’s a very polite guy and you thoroughly misrepresented him — without a mandate, obviously.
Before that, you thought it appropriate to bereate me on the behalf of Gildas Lormeau, just because I actually worked for a while in order to offer some feedback on his extension.
It so happens that Gildas found my remarks useful. So, once again, it becomes obvious that you’re prone to launch personal attacks against people, under the guise of defending alleged victims who haven’t ever asked for your policing, and who don’t feel victimised in the least.
It does not help that your criticism of my technical remarks is completely off the mark. You did not understand a word of what I wrote. Your retort is silly, apart from being incredibly rude. If the developer himself says he might implement some of my suggestions, who are you to pretend and “admire the developer’s patience with users like me” ?
My non-technical suggestion to you would be to try and debug your own character, before assassinating other people’s. And to avoid speaking on behalf of other parties. Nobody needs a self-appointed lawyer such as you.
I like “Mozilla Archive Format, with MHT and Faithful Save” as my favorite.
Firefox became WebExtension and it became unusable, so Waterfox and Pale Moon were indispensable as workarounds.
But the disadvantages can be solved likely.
Indeed, SingleFile is made up well.
And I feel respectful for the dedicated Reply from the author against this topic.
As long as there are such amazing add-on developers, Mozilla will be saved.
Nothing scientific, of course, but I just tried to save a media page and an Amazon page (both more complex than Ghacks).
Both are easier to save in Save Page WE than in Single Page. (Single Page freezes Firefox, before letting go.)
Both render more faithfully under Save Page WE (neither is perfect).
And Save Page WE files are roughly half the size.
Default settings for both. Save Page WE flags an inordinate number of unloadable items on the Amazon page (35 out of 105).
@Clairvaux: Thanks a lot for all your feedback! Could you give an example of URL? On my end, I don’t see any freeze or broken things when I try to save a page on Amazon. You can send me an email via the Firefox addon page.
Mail sent :)
@Clairvaux, interesting and surprising when it comes to SingleFile (‘Save Page WE’ approximations don’t surprise me).
Could you provide both urls so that I have a look (simple curiosity, no challenging in mid)?
Have a try at http://www.dailymail.co.uk. It’s a complex page. Trying to save it with Single File just hangs Firefox, with the dreaded error “A script is making Firefox unresponsive” — and no way out of that, except reload the page.
Save Page WE, on the other hand, completes the task. It does take a while however, and most images are lacking. Checking all options in “Chosen” brings them back, but this produces a 9 MB file, which is very slow to load, and ultimately hangs the browser (at least when I tried it).
By the way, I have just noticed that the optional levels of thoroughness in Save Page WE seem to be, from lesser to deeper, Basic > Standard > Chosen. However, the order in which they are displayed, in the right-click menu, is Basic > Chosen > Standard. Plus, some items in Chosen seem to overlap with items in Standard. If all that wasn’t confusing enough.
None of that is meant to disparage the developers’ work, on the contrary. But it does reinforce my point that the bulk of a program’s features should be implemented by the publisher, and extensions should not be relied upon for that.
Browsers have become operating systems. Far too many core features have been delegated to extension developers, who cannot possibly cope.
Just being able to save a web page in a single file, for later referral, in a universal format, is obviously a basic requirement. It’s also obvious that it’s a quite complex task, given the monsters that web sites have become nowadays. And it’s a moving target, because content is evolving all the time.
It’s probably significant that Microsoft was the first to get this right a few eons ago, with its .mhtml format. I also remember, from the time printing was a more universal output method than nowadays, that Internet Explorer did it best.
@Clairvaux Thanks for the URL example. I confirm that SingleFile has some difficulties when it tries to optimize the page before processing it. I’ll try to see if that can be done faster on this site. However if you wait a little bit, you’ll get the saved page which looks fine. If you uncheck “remove unused styles” in the options page, then it you should not see ““A script is making Firefox unresponsive” at all (note that it is not error, just a warning that the script seems to be slow). The saved page will be a bit bigger though. I agree that browsers should offer the feature out of the box. I implemented SingleFile at a time there was zero options on Chrome. Now, things have changed and the support for MHTML in Chrome is much better than in the past for example.
@Clairvaux, I just archived your page : http://www.dailymail.co.uk
Yes indeed Firefox showed “A script in the extension “SingleFile” is causing Firefox to slow down”
To slow down, not to hang. Just wait a few seconds and there you go with that heavy page perfectly archived (9.5 MB!).
I’ve put the Archived html online :
https://a.uguu.se/axTW0e78wqEJ_UKHome_DailyMailOnline.html
Generally speaking I better understand your approach which is techie-led. i’m a plain basic user and if it works OK I don’t search any further, even if understanding and suggesting improvements is understandable. OK.
Suggestion :
– Make the extension remember the last download location. Save Page WE does.
Save Page WE saves this page into a 640 KB file.
Single Page manages it in 166 KB. That’s nice.
Suggestions :
– Offer a way to dismiss the “i” on top of the page.
– Make it a more conspicuous addition to the page, so it’s obvious one is not viewing the online version.
– Offer different date formats.
– Show the original url (just going there, without knowing where you’re going, may be unsettling).
@Clairvaux, the “i” infobar on the top-right of the page is an option :
SingleFile / Options / User interface / display an infobar when viewing archives
The Options page, as always, is there to fine tune the extension.
This said, be the infobar option chosen or not, a simple right-click / ‘View page source’ displays right at the top the source url and date of the archive.
“i” icon : the option covers a different need. My suggestion is that the added information may be dismissed once it has been displayed and viewed. It gets in the way, and you might want to have a screenshot of the page.
View Page Source is a developer comand. There’s no way one can guess the url is there, unless one is a geek. And it needs a click. And it opens a horrible page with thousands of pieces of code that I don’t want to see in front of me — ever. Where is the original url in that mess ? That’s not a substitute for the way Save Page WE handles that — and the way MAFF did.
@Clairvaux, sugestions, suggestions, suggestions… what are you looking for : SingleFile-Clairvaux.xpi? A Clairvaux-tailored extension? SingleFile is at it is and bloating it with users’ fantasies could be a pain for the developer and for users who consider the extension good as it is now.
What a pain. I admire the developer’s patience with users like you…
@ Tom Hawack
You might want to tone down the obnoxiousness. It seems this developer, for one, is interested in my suggestions. Why do you insist on bossing people around, and speaking on behalf of others ?
Testing is a major part of software development. Some people volunteer to write software, others volunteer to try it and offer feedback. This is a good thing, not a bad thing as you purport to make it. Not everybody is Microsoft, and can afford paid-for user testing.
If you don’t like my suggestions, why don’t you make your own ? Or at least explain why you think mine are not good ideas ? I thought tech blogs were places where people expressed their opinions and wishes on all things digital. Maybe you don’t like freedom of speech ?
@Clairvaux, take it cool. I corrected my statement as a gentleman, don’t oblige me to regret it.
@ Tom Hawack
So it’s you informing us you’re a gentleman. I guess we’ll have to take your Lordship at his word. I must have missed your apology, though.
@Clairvaux, now that I think about it, can’t recall of any apology, don’t dream. I guess I was trying to get things relaxed. Off to elsewhere now.
@Clairvaux, time flies, seems already old our dialog of the other day. No problem, really.
I’m always surprised — stunned even — how some users’ comments about software, applications, extensions described in an article, here as elsewhere, seem to reflect that what is described in the article is conceived by them as a begging to try, use, adopt, glorify the software, application, extension. It’s only an article, a description, an information, no one is begging, there’s no point in commenting as if we are in front of a salesman, like “Nops, bad stuff, improve it and I may be interested” : Hey ! this is not a department store :=) Kiddish attitude.
Is this better than Save Page WE? I see that it does not have feature to convert MHT/MAFF files
It may, I let you judge. It has some unique features and vice-versa. For your information, as far as I know, SingleFile was the first extension to use the HTML format to save a page in a single file. I began writing it 8 years ago for Chrome because MHTML was not supported at that time. So, I would say that I more experienced IMHO.
I may add features in the to save pages in MAFF or MHTML but I know that it will require a lot of work.
Hi, I just tested your extension. Your extension will result in large size for some pages.
Example: https://translate.google.com/
unMHT: 460 KB
Save Page WE: 624 KB
SingleFile: 864 KB
So far I don’t encounter any glitch on the saved pages.
I hope that someday you will add the conversion feature. I have many MHT files need to be converted. Opening them one by one will take a long time..
Thank you :)
You can convert MHTML files to HTML pages with Chrome today. If you enable the MHTML support in Chrome, enable the Filesystem access for SingleFile, then you just have to open the file and process it with Singlefile. Note that you can save multiple tabs in one click by selecting them first (for example with shift-click). Note that your it may be a hard time for your CPU.
Here are my results with the options set by default on both extensions and no other extension installed for https://translate.google.com :)
Save Page WE: 1.4 MB (there are also some unexpected JS errors in the console when I open the saved page)
SingleFile: 1.2 MB
But I agree, MHTML is more suited to optimize the page size.
Thank you to the developer for writing such a great and useful extension for Firefox!
Yes, I save pages fairly regularly. Who knows when they might disappear. Using MozArchiver, a cool fork of the aforementioned Mozilla Archive Format.
I use MozArchiver in Pale Moon and Mozilla Archive Format in Firefox ESR 52.x. I just added SingleFile to Google Chrome, Iridium, and Firefox Quantum.
MozArchiver is built for ‘Pale Moon’, it’s a legacy add-on and in no way a Webextension required format for Firefox 57+ :
“Extension to allow the creation and viewing of MAFF and MHT archive files within Pale Moon”
Not sure what you are talking about. No one said MozArchiver was any of those things or that it was meant for Firefox. Check Martin’s question again, please.
@Alex, a comment may refer to the article or to the article’s author question.
The article is about an extension called ‘SingleFile’
The question is “Do you save webpages frequently or regularly?”
If your comment refers to the question only then I believe most users expect that to be specified, because in anyone’s approach the article, its content is what we refer to. The article here is not about saving webpages, it’s about saving web pages with an extension called ‘Single File’ and Martin’s question (as most of the time) widens the article with a more general approach.
Maybe haven’t you read the article, only interested by the question because it fitted your answer? I think most of us focus on an article, seems not all of us.
@Tom Hawack, while I understand your need for interpreting everyone else’s inner purposes and intentions (many people do it), no one really asked for your middle-man policing, ghettoization and “Instructions for use”.
Less is more: please stop spamming the place with lengthy, pointless chit-chat posts and try to concentrate on the subject at hand, only posting when you have actually something useful to say.
You could have avoided this by Googling as anyone else in a few seconds, but being a smart ass ultimately seemed like the better option.
@Alex, I’m not interpreting anything and even less anyone’s “inner purposes and intentions”, I’m only noticing a comment which articulates around upside-down logic,yours so to say.
I never spam, but I do say my word and sorry if the lack of 140 characters doesn’t suit you : I won’t change. I think your problem is somewhat related to brains.
@Alex, sorry for mentioning your “brains”, didn’t mean it that way. Your comment just happened at a time I was elsewhere annoyed. No problem. We may disagree and be both a genius :=)
MozArchiver? Could you mention where you’ve found that? Not on AMO, or then under another name. I never heard about ‘MozArchiver’ …
https://addons.palemoon.org/addon/mozarchiver/
You can just Google it
https://github.com/Lootyhoof/mozarchiver
Have just installed it in both FF (61.0.02 64-Bit) and Chrome (68.0.3440.106 64-Bit).
Seems to do what it says on the tin, with some exceptions – I’m finding some pages will not save.
In FF the background dims, but it just sits there and does nothing. Attempting to save the same page in Chrome produces a red “ERR” on the icon, telling me there’s some sort of error.
I intend to keep it installed and give it a fair opportunity to work, though.
In FF I have Save Pages WE, which I’ve been fairly satisfied with, other than it refusing to download some elements of a page (it doesn’t tell me WHICH elements or WHY it can’t d/l them, however…)
Like others, I mournfully lament and greatly miss my Mozilla Archive Format (I have nearly 4000 pages saved in MAFF format, across several HDD’s, which I can still rename the extension to .zip and extract the contents (minus the very-important-to-me save date and original URL that is stored in the file).
@Charles B Cox,
“Seems to do what it says on the tin, with some exceptions – I’m finding some pages will not save.”
Could you share those pages’ addresses? At this time I haven’t found problematic pages. One of the strengths of SingleFile is it’s ability to handle complex pages such as those of lemonde.fr : try saving a page of that website with other page archive extensions and see the difference!
Have emailed you a link to the problem page :)
@Charles, Thanks for your feedback, your issue should be fixed in the lastest version :)
Check out Zotero if you want to archive Web pages organised in a database. Attach keywords and notes.
I have. Great idea on paper. I’d love it if it worked in practice. I tried all the available academic programs such as Zotero. My conclusion is you might find them useful if you absolutely need their core function, which is quoting academic sources in a standardised way. However, if what you’re doing is general knowledge management, all of them fail in some major way. Actually, I have Zotero and its add-on installed. I just tried it once more, and I hit this problem :
https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/connector_zotero_unavailable
Trying to debug port problems just to save a freaking Web page is a bit over the top. Meanwhile, Mozilla is busy saving the world.
Why bother with installing another Chrome extension when you can enable chrome://flags/#save-page-as-mhtml and save page as a single MHTML file?
Because many things in life happen to be achievable in several ways and that the easiest is not always the best. Think of implications.
Great idea. I’ll try it at once. This is unfortunate :
“You may need to scroll down the entire page to be sure all elements are loaded.”
Very anti-usability if true.
I currently use Save Page WE with Firefox, as a substitute to .maff. Not bad, but not as elegant. I have never been able to add comments. How is Single File different ? Does it keep the original url and date ?
I just discovered that Opera had Save as .pdf. Tried it on an article. The second page worked beautifully, but the first page was cut at the top.
You may need to scroll down the page because a lot of sites rely on JavaScript to load images on the fly, this is called “lazy-loading”. I implemented an option in SingleFile (“save lazy-loaded images”, enabled by default) to try to circumvent this issue though. For example, if you go to https://www.lemonde.fr/, all the lazy-loaded images will be saved without needing to scroll.
@ Gildas
Now I understand what that “lazy-thing” means. But you do say that in some cases, even that option does not work. Is there an error message that warns you, and encourages you to scroll down in order to load the whole page ?
That’s an interesting idea. I’m not sure I’ll be able to implement it reliably because these “lazy-things” are often proprietary so they are not easy to detect and handle actually. It means the extension could think everything is fine and not display a warning whereas the saved page contains only placeholders instead of images for example. I will also try to implement your suggestions in a near future regarding the saved date format and making the URL of the saved page more visible. These features are easier to add ;).
@Clairvaux: perhaps we can mend fences by this comment?
Thanks for mentioning Save Page WE because SingleFile does not work on Waterfox, which I am using. I installed Save Page WE and it works. Regarding the original url & date, in the options that can be set as a bar at the top of the saved page; I guess you figured that out.
With comments, with a bottle of claret… anything. Save Page WE is indeed able to save the url and date, like .maff. However, I try to save comments with the file, and they are nowhere to be seen. Also, I object to the vocabulary. Saving Basic / Chosen / Standard Items is not a proper choice of words. What’s more extensive ? Basic or Standard ?
@Clairvaux: the terms are not clear. To understand the differences you have to open the options, tab Saved Items. Default; Standard & Basic are all checked, for Chosen none are checked.
When you save as a PDF the comments are excluded too. But, a PDF file can be annotated, HTML files cannot, which is unfortunate. Then again, nothing is perfect in life, so one has to choose whatever is most suitable for a particular situation.
Cheers, à ta santé !!
This extension is not useless. Only power users and those who need to save complex web pages as single file will understand how the built-in functionality falls short of saving all the information even if you save as MHT. Many pages saved without JavaScript are broken. And comparing HTML to PDF is stupid. It also offers auto-save functionality, saving selection, saving unpinned tabs or SAVE ALL TABS. The fact that it can save frames, scripts, media and lazy loaded images is outstanding. Kudos to the developer. I will be donating to such an awesome project since he has given away so much of his hard work for free.
Jeff, You write: ” And comparing HTML to PDF is stupid”
1.) I have not seen anyone doing that in the above comments
2.) What makes what stupid?
Please enlighten me.
JJ,
It’s not stupid to compare them, but I think the point is they are very different.
PDF is a proprietary format used for published work.
It has to be divided into pages and is limited by the page’s margins.
Think, a book or a research paper.
It is pretty tricky to make; even trickier to edit.
It’s often buggy.
HTML is plain text and can be viewed and modified in something like Notepad even.
It doesn’t have to be paginated and can be infinitely long (and wide).
Basically way more flexible and IMO better in every way.
People are saying ‘just save the page into PDF’. But saving in PDF breaks the page to the point it’s almost unreadable. Try saving this page and see yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
Sorry but if you can’t save the whole page with the dependencies included, you can hardly be called developer of anything.
This has been a feature of most browsers for over a decade now, not to mention this is 2018, most of us rely on the developer tools embedded in the browsers nowadays (which is way faster to play test, since it’s real time).
I can’t find a reason to download a webpage (from a developer point of view), if you own the page you already have the files in the first place with direct access through FTP.
This is mainly used from people who want OFFLINE versions of a specific site, and not by developers.
@Emanon, Some misunderstanding? Are you confusing the kudos I gave to the developer of this addon with “developers” in general? Also I don’t know what you are talking about. This extension allows saving a more complete version of any webpage than what the built-in browser functionality allows. Does the built-in save functionality allow saving scripts, frames, video, audio etc? I just don’t see why anyone has a problem with an extension offering some extra functionality over what the native browser functionality offers. There’s no need to attack it and call it useless.
@JJ, some comments are saying how they just save as PDF instead of this extension or the browser’s functionality which saves as HTML. PDF is a fixed layout format, HTML can reflow text. Core difference.
@ Jeff
“”PDF is a fixed layout format, HTML can reflow text. Core difference.”
Quite. Speaking of which, it seems to me that html does not reflow text as it used to do, only a few months ago. I used to be able to have a Firefox window and another application window side by side, and the contents would adapt. Now, I find myself having to extend my browser window horizontally all the time, if I don’t want to use the horizontal scroll bar.
This has been most spectacular in Firefox. Is it an effect of Quantum ? All my other browsers seem to behave similarly (Opera and Vivaldi). It’s a major usability problem. Anyone else has noticed that ?
So you need to be a developer to save web pages? Can you show me how to use developer tools to save web pages? As far as I know there’s no way to save pages using developer tools unless what you meant was the File->Save Page As.
Why sentences contradict with each other? People who are not developer want to save pages? Most of us rely on the developer tools? Who are ‘us’? How do you know most of ‘us’ rely on developer tools? As far as I know most people don’t even know developer tools or even know how to use it.
One of main reason to save web pages is for tutorials. I have many MHT tutorials that are not available in web anymore.
I use evernote so just matter of clicking button,
iirc nixnote (open source version) had an extension too but don’t quote me on that
dunno why listed me as anonymous.
example of using evernote and only using save article option.
can click to save whole page too
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s20/sh/289be52f-ce95-4940-9813-42baab9629ee/8e5cb3b75ea743cad0651ac3b272fcbd
I think Evernote does a great job as shown in your saved note. The main difference between SingleFile and Evernote is that SingleFile process the page on your machine. You do not rely on any third-party provider when using it.
evernote processed on machine (there is full program installed) but I can share (like this was done) using the evernote server.
*nix based need to use combo of nixnote and the evernote FF extension.
evernote processed on machine (there is full program installed) but I can share (like this was done) using the evernote server.
*nix based need to use combo of nixnote and the evernote FF extension.
but this extension look slike it could be useful alongside programs like evernote, so gonna play with it today.
Thanks for the information, I did not know Evernote worked on client-side. I hope you’ll like SingleFile :)
sure I will. there are times when each different method is best tool for the job.
appreciate your working on it.
So if someday evernote close the door, your saved pages will be gone? What about when you don’t have internet connection? No thanks.
they are still on pc no matter what evernote server or internet connection does. installed program reads the evernote db file independently of server/internet status.
thats why I stated in first 4 words evernote processed on machine.
and they can all be easily exported to different formats.
the evernote server is for sharing or access when not at pc the program installed on.
I seldom use the evernote share feature, pc synced with phone and tablet so not needed. only use it for specific shares like I did above.
I see, thanks for explaining. You just said it processed on machine but you did not imply that it can work offline too.
I might take a look at Evernote later.
hope it helps. honestly don’t know if free version has any restrictions, been paid version so long I forget.
but, just one more tool to use. having choices helps.
I looked at the version history since it’s obviously a WebExtension and may not work properly with FF forks like Waterfox.
What’s surprising about that is that there have been no less than 198 versions released already in just three months! The addon seems to be being updated more than once a day with several updates in any 24 hour period appearing according to the version history.
It would be interesting to hear from the dev as to why that’s happening if he or she happens along to Ghacks.
@TelIV: I’m the author of the extension. I can explain you why I tend to publish a lot of versions. First, this extension is 8 years old on Chrome but Google decided to unpublish the main part of it (it was composed of two extensions at that time) some months ago. So, I decided to rewrite it because I had not no other choices actually, and the existing code was not very pretty. Thus, the first versions I published were lacking a lot of features compared to the previous version. The goal for me was to deliver the missing features as soon as possible, it explains why I decided to publish a lot of versions but with minor increments. The big advantage is that it is a lot easier for me to identify bugs or regressions, which happen quite often when you rewrite from scratch a program. Now, the extension is stable but I’m still doing some minor changes. I will publish then a 1.5 which should not go up to 1.5.90 ;).
@Gildas,
OK, understood. It just seemed a bit odd to see so many versions in such a short period of time.
I haven’t installed your extension yet since I don’t save pages that often, but if the need arises, I’ll certainly keep it in mind.
@TelV, the developer is a perfectionist! He ads new versions as soon as they offer the slightest improvement and given the tough work of archiving a Webpage correctly every single penny becomes worth a buck!.
I’m afraid I have no clue concerning the portability of SingleFile to browsers that don’t handle Webextensions, unfortunately. I’d quickly believe it wouldn’t be possible as any other Webextension.
@TelV, OK… I must admit the dancing position of Waterfox is one of the reasons I abandoned it to return to Firefox : it may handle legacy add-ons as well as Webextensions but the latter at least are not handled as they are in true Webextension only browsers. Waterfox is problematic, has always been when I experienced it and seems to still be.
@Tom Hawack,
According to the Waterfox blog dated 27 March 2018, the browser should support both WebExtensions as well as the legacy flavor: https://blog.waterfoxproject.org/waterfox-its-legacy-and-looking-to-the-future
That said, I’ve noted that some WE don’t function properly in Waterfox. For example, a WE called Legibility which turns pale grey fonts which are almost unreadable on some sites to black doesn’t work properly on dictionary.com with the font switching from grey to black and then back to grey again.
Legibility does work on the Ghacks site however so I’m happy about that. Swings and roundabouts I guess…
When Firefox 57 took the relay as many of us I desperately missed some “legacy” add-ons among which the excellent indeed ‘Mozilla Archive Format’. I tried several Webextensions aiming to save pages but none, update after update, managed to backup a webpage correctly (heavy ones anyway) and none managed to save the page as I had it in front of me once cleaned by whatever scripts and styles. That was until I discovered ‘SingleFile’, as pertinent, well thought and carried out as its name.
I’m really most fond of this brilliant Webextension because it soes the job… I’d say perfectly. No fuss, a perfect rendering (I see the html archived page *exactly* as its source! This is what I had been searching for ever since November 2017 and Firefox Quantum. It just fits a quest, how couldn’t I be enthusiastic?
Many thanks for the article, detailed and right to the point, as always.
I forgot visual facts :
Ghacks-1-Original : http://funkyimg.com/i/2KWxi.jpg
Ghacks-2-Archive : http://funkyimg.com/i/2KWxj.jpg
Screenshots only of the visible part of the screen, but the remaining is as well perfectly identical to the pixel. Amazing!
I avoided saving web pages precisely because of the file+folder result; I even tried to delete the folder but then the file did not work or looked horrible. So used to save to PDF. This extension is a big improvement, in fact, I don’t understand why it isn’t a native option in a browser.
You can save page using MHT since many years ago. All browsers supported this except Firefox. Saving the webpage as PDF didn’t work as it will always break the page layout, not to mention the some difficulty like copy/pasting text/image.
@Anonymous: saving as PDF is fine, depending on what you want/need. Copy/pasting text from a PDF depends on the PDF reader one uses – Foxit supports it.
In other instances, an HTML file is more appropriate. For now, I have installed Save Page WE. A couple of differences with a PDF version:
* in PDF the links do not work
* Save Page WE does not work when a web page is in Firefox’s reader mode
* the file size of a PDF is about half of an HTML page.
Nope, page saved by PDF are not usable.
Just try this to save page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
Maybe the page you need to usually save are contained by plain text only so it’s sufficient for you. Saving as PDF not only break the page but also separate it into many pages. That Wikipedia page resulted in 54 PDF pages!
Try copying the image in that PDF, can you do it? Of course not! Try clicking some URL, of course it doesn’t work! What about URL hidden in text? It’s lost forever!
To be honest, you can save a file in MHTML with Chrome, you must enable it in chrome://flags and force Chrome to open MHTML files. I guess they made this deliberately hard to enable because MHTML is a bit “too powerful” and could cause some security issues related to cross-site scripting.
@Gildas: I installed the extension on Waterfox without checking if it works because all the extensions I have installed work. But, reading TeIV’s comment below, I checked if it actually works and find that it does NOT.
Is there any way to get it to work on WF?
I just installed it successfully on WF, but it didn’t tell me where it saved the page, so I have to look all over for it. LOL
All Firefox downloads, unless set, go to the user’s default download folder :
Firefox / Options / General / Files and Applications / Downloads
@klaas: I installed the extension on Waterfox and was able to save a page without any problem. It could be related to a conflict with another extension though. Are you using the latest version of Waterfox (56.2.2)?
@Gildas: yes, I am using WF 56.2.2. Conflict with another extension seems strange: both Save Page WE and Mozilla Archive Format work fine.
By the way, what is the advantage of SingleFile over Save Page WE? They seem to do the same thing.
@klaas: I used both extension. SingleFile has better result. The HTML files created by Save Page WE open slowly in Firefox when the internet is connected. Because the file want to get some data from original URL. Also sometimes download the video file embedded even the max file size is set. To check, please test one page from https://talachart.ir with Save Page WE and open saved file while you connected the internet. You see it open slowly.
But SingleFile also has some bugs that I reported in https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile/issues/97 .
@AliM1988: thanks for your comment. Couple of remarks from my side:
1. I have now switched from Waterfox to Firefox quantum
2. I use Save Page WE instead of Single File because I find it gives a betterperformance, and it gives more metadata about a saved page
3. I saved the page you linked to, then reopened it. It did NOT open slowly, it opened immediately, reconfirms to me Save Page WE is a good extension.
That’s strange, I’ll try do do more tests… The difference between the two extensions is that mine is 8 years old. It existed long before Save Page WE, so I had no reason to abandon it. My extension is also open source and the code is publicly available on GitHub. Anyone can contribute or audit the code.
@Gildas: OK, that’s clear.
Sorry, I did not test the extension on WaterFox yet. I’ll try to see what’s wrong soon.
@klaas, I am using Firefox, SeaMonkey, Waterfox, Pale Moon.
Waterfox can use both WebExtension and LegacyAddon at the same time. Therefore, my recommendation is “Mozilla Archive Format, with MHT and Faithful Save”.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mozilla-archive-format/
But if you want to use “single file”
AddonManager in the upper right corner “search”, by searching a single file, it is listed up. Just install that “single file”.
@owl: thanks for jumping in. The MAF add-on is useful too, esp. if you want to have several tabs included in the single file save. What’s more, with MAF the various tabs are saved as they appeared in Waterfox the way they were opened from NewsFox, i.e. with parent-child positions, that’s cool. Useful when doing research.
And the .maff file is smaller than the html file, it is only slightly bigger than the pdf file for the same web page.
The only drawback, of course, is that when it comes to converting for future use you’re back to a file and a folder for each conversion, which defeats the objective of having a single file.
@Gildas: thank you for your honesty :-) I don’t use Chrome.
I save pages all the time. I right click and Save Page As. This extension is silly when you already have the capability built in.
Hi, I’m the author of the extension. The goal is to avoid having a separate folder. Thus, you can for example send saved pages easily by email. You could also use MHTML for this. However, this format is proprietary (Microsoft) and its support varies a lot from one browser to another one. Moreover, MHTML has in the past caused some security issues (cf. https://www.securityweek.com/attackers-hide-malicious-macros-mhtml-documents for example). By saving pages in one HTML file, you can avoid all these issues.
This is a wonderful product. Thank you so much!
Hello Gildas!!
Well I have been using a portable Firefox ESR version with MAF addon for saving websites.. I really don’t mind about an extra file size but for an identical rendered website. How does it compare to the .maf format? Which is better in that regard?
Hello Marc,
If you are still want to save as MAF, you can try Web ScrapBook, which is conpatible with Firefox Quantum, this addon have an option to choose which format you can use.
Hi Marc,
You can try Web ScrapBook extension, which is compatible with Firefox Quantum. If you are still want to save as MAF, this would be a good choice for you.
@Gildas, can you please add an option to choose the download folder at save time? THKS!
SingleFile / Options / File name / open the “Save as” dialog to confirm the file name
“Check this option to display the “Save as” dialog in order to confirm the file name before saving the page. If the option “save pages in background” is unchecked then a prompt dialog will be displayed instead of the “Save as” dialog. “
This function seem already builtin iin Chromium: https://i.imgur.com/w5Q13Zk.png
Browser’s save page function is broken. If you save pages with many javascript, the page will most likely break somewhere, not to mention many files need to be saved. This extension just produce one file.
Yes, but this option does not prevent the separate folder to be created. That’s the whole point of SingleFile.
Yes this option prevent separate folder to be created, I use it since many years every week.
It just produce ONE html file
And you didn’t tell us about it?!
The browsers give you the option to download just the page or the page and it’s dependencies, you should always download the dependencies as well if you want the page to work properly.
Not to mention even outside the browsers you can use CMD to download webpages, this extension is as useless as it can get.
I usually print a desired web page as a pdf, after making sure it’s just what I want it to contain, and nothing superfluous like extra pages I do not want. This usually works well in Chrome, but a few exception web pages print to a pdf better when first viewed in Edge or even IE11. I do not claim this is the best approach for everyone.