157422 - Saving Multiple Tabs as Single File

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: File Handling, enhancement)

Description

[Patrick Thompson]

Since using tabs I've noticed that I've changed my browsing methods. Now, when
I'm researching an issue (technical, political, scientific, sociological, etc.)
I now use the tab feature to pull in related articles within the same window of
the initial one. This allow me to accumulate many POVs on a particular subject.
In many cases, I've wanted to save this "grouped" data for later review or even
future reference.

Mozilla does allow one to do this in an online fashion, using the group bookmark
method but this often isn't sufficient since it merely saves the bookmarks which
will then need to later be re-loaded from the net. This presents a couple of
problems. One, there is no guarantee that all of the current articles will be
available the next time one opens the group-bookmarks and, two, providing this
information externally to, say, another person in the forms of multiple
bookmarks makes it less likely that they will review the entire group of articles.

What's needed is a means to save a tabbed window as a single, self-extracting
archive file. There are a number of formats that support this, the most
well-known being the zip format.

As to the save structure, Mozilla should add a link to each saved page that
points to the originating page, perhaps at the bottom, so that one could easily
go back to the information source to both verify the content and also determine
if the content has been updated since the archive had been created.

Also, Mozilla should create a TOC page that contains the links to the local
version of the tabbed pages. When the files is expanded, this would be the page
that is loaded, by default. However, Mozilla should set a flag in this TOC's
HTML (perhaps a special attribute in the generated DOCTYPE, or some other, tag?)
that would be ignored by other non-tabbed browsers but would signify to Mozilla
to open the other pages in the file as tabs. (This may not be needed since
Mozilla will know the file contains multiple pages and default to "tabbing" them?)

My belief is that this feature would extend the usefullness of tabbed browsing
in a way that is consistent (and unique) with the intent of the tab design
interface and be viewed very positively from the general user community at large.

Comment 1

[Martin Kutschker]

A zip is not self-extracting by definition. And I would not recommend it as it
is not XP. Zip or Jar is fine.

OTOH, it would be nice if the zipping could be optional as HTML files (plus
images etc) within a directory structure would be compatible with other browsers.

Comment 2

[Philip White]

Featuritis, IMHO.

Comment 3

[Patrick Thompson]

Phillip, I disagree. The fact is, with the advent of tabs AND "Save As/Web Page,
complete" this lack of function seems more like an obvious omission than one of
planned exclusion, imo.

Comment 4

[Alan]

If you are interested in saveing as a single file strongly suggest you take a
look at the MHTML feature requests.  (possibly blockers of this bug)

bug 18764   RFE: Full rfc2557 MHTML multipart/related support in BROWSER     
bug 40873   RFE: Save as rfc 2557 MHTML; complete webpage in one file     
bug 52386   RFE: Consider improved MHTML support

Multipart html, frames, html, etc all saved in a single multipart (MIME) file. 
If you really want the file to be compressed you might try and get them to add
Multipart Hypertext Gzipped (.mhgz?) 
I bet something else in mozilla already requires gzip, or it will be need for
SVGZ support.  Incidentally I just filed a feature request for SVGZ, bug 157514.  
Gzipped XML is a fairly standard technology.  (I wont go into the merits of Zip
versus Gzip, im sure a search on Google will turn up a lifetimes worth of
discussion, openoffice.org alone will probably have vast amounts of discussion
on this issue and all the reasons why they went with Zip).  

this is definately a different bug from bug 157412 which i posted, while saving
as a single file would be an enhancement on bug 157412, i just want a more
efficient way to download mutliple pages (and to be really immature, i posted
first so there is no way i am being marked as a duplicate of a later bug)

Adding 157412 as a blocker for this.  

Comment 5

[Patrick Thompson]

Alan, as written, bug 157412 seems to going in a different direction than this
RFE, i.e., that RFE seems to be requesting the ability to save tabs "Save as,
Multi-Web page, complete" into a single directory/folder; whereas this RFE is
requesting the ability of saving a tabbed window as a single, archived file
(optimally, compressed.)

Its unclear whether saving tabbed pages in a single file would meet the
requirments you set out in bug 157412 since I'm not clear on what, exactly, your
intent was in wanting them saved in an unarchived fashion? It could be that this
bug represents a superset of bug 157412 or it could be that this is going in a
different direction?

Also, I originally discussed this bug's capability in bug 40873 and was rightly
informed that my request was beyond the scope of that bug, which was only meant
to deal with single MHTML files, thus, I opened this RFE.

As to which compression format to use, I don't much care, as long as its
workable across platforms. I specified zip since I know that Theme files, for
example, are really zip files renamed to jar. Again, which compression algorithm
Mozilla would ultimately choose (if any at all) isn't an issue with me.

Finally, I'm the last person to be offended (or put off) with immature
behaviour, just ask anyone who's entered a discussion with me on something I'm
passionate about  :-)

Comment 6

[Patrick Thompson]

On further reflection, it seems appropriate that if this design is undertaken
AND if the psuedo-TOC page is constructed prior to the save, that the saving
mechanism allow a comment section to be added that would form as a lead-in to
the TOC entries. Basically, allowing the user to add a comment that would form
the body text within the TOC page. That way, one could elaborate on the
significance for each contained page rather than leaving their inclusion for the
reader to devine (assuming some of them may very well be from disparate sites.)

Comment 7

[Vidar Haarr (not reading bugmail)]

Getting of UNCONF radar.

Comment 8

[Alan]

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=157422#c6
i am very interested by comment 6 by Patrick Thompson
i quite often find myself wondering where a saved page or file has come from
i have tried to get in the habit of saving a Shortcut or a text file containing
the source URL but often forget.  
It would be very useful if a comment block or meta tag was automatically
inserted at the top of a saved page with information like the source location,
date saved (which is not necessarily the same as the file creation date), and
perhaps other information.  (Mozilla already modifies the saved file by changing
the relative paths of images and scripts so further modification of the source
code would not be a big deal)

You file a Request and ill vote for it Patrick

Comment 9

[Cees T.]

Mozilla Archive Format almost does what you want.
http://maf.mozdev.org/
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2925/

I just tested the "Save Tabs In Archive..." function of MAF 0.6.3's in a Firefox 1.5.0.6 window with 9 Bugzilla windows, http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=1237227#1237227, and http://www.codeproject.com/vb/net/MhtBuilder.asp

The output was 

"Bug 157422 - Saving Multiple Tabs as Single File.mht" to "Bug 157422 - Saving Multiple Tabs as Single File-10.mht"

Not what i hoped, but it should be easy to fix as MAFF stores each page in a folder that appears to be named as milliseconds since epoch.

Comment 10

[Cees T.]

> Not what i hoped, but it should be easy to fix as MAFF stores each page in a
> folder that appears to be named as milliseconds since epoch.

Sorry, i'm a bit dehydrated and didn't expect the file picker to have ".mht" available (much less selected). Saving as .maff stored all open tabs in a zip file.