381413 - Support MAF format

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: File Handling, enhancement)

Description

[Cees T.]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Firefox 2.0; Kubuntu) Gecko
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Firefox 2.0; Kubuntu) Gecko

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/212

The "Mozilla Archive Format" consists of a "Save as complete" result, placed in a timestamped folder, enhanced with RDF metadata, and zipped up in a compact file.

I've read Firefox 3.0 will be able to save PDF, but isn't that a more complex and proprietary format? MAF is simpler and smaller than MHT, and doesn't require an (often heavy) PDF viewer.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. See.
2. Save.
3. Share.
Actual Results:  
Usually a title.html file with an accompanying folder (title_files). Only Windows Explorer seems to implement handling these as one bundle.

Expected Results:  
A small file containing the page as i saw it.

Comment 1

[Steve England [:stevee]]

Dupe of bug 40873?

Comment 2

[Cees T.]

No. While the MAF extension also has support for saving/loaing of MHT files, this bug is about its own (superior) format.

Comment 3

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

PDF is being submitted as an ISO standard, and has been open since 1995.  PDF and MHT/MAF are not the same, nor do they have the same set of usecases.

Comment 4

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

-> Core and confirming as a valid RFE.

Comment 5

[Ian Macfarlane]

This has to be _way_ lower priority than support for MHT files (bug 40873), which is a major blocker for current users of IE to switch.

Frankly, even though the MAF format is reasonably open, I think I'd prefer to see it put through a standards body first before including in Firefox.

Comment 6

[Justin Gombos]

PDF is entirely orthogonal to issue, as it's not suitable for archival purposes(*).

MAF is simply a renamed zip file, and zip files are quite popular, although admittedly not an ISO standard yet.  It would be reasonable for Firefox to move in that direction, because it's likely that zip will become an ISO standard.

Let's not hold up progress by insisting that every feature map to an ISO standard.  Zip is pretty close to a de facto standard, so let's use it.

(*) The reason PDF is unsuitable for the purpose of archival is that the content is designed to appear within geometric boundaries, like 8.5x11 inches for example.  It changes the content and layout of a webpage to force it into a PDF, ultimately causing information to be lost, and compromising the dynamic scalability of the presentation.