Linux Format

SingleFile­Z

Version: GIT Web: https://github.com/ gildas-lormeau/SingleFile­Z

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The modern internet is like an endless river. What if you want to catch an instant of time and save some pages as a static snapshot for future reference? That would sound straightfo­rward in the old days of static HTML sites, but not in 2021. Almost any popular website carries a heavy load of Javascript, its derivative­s, frameworks and new APIs, so that saving a site as an HTML page only gives average results. Luckily, we have SingleFile­Z, a browser extension that solves the forementio­ned issue.

SingleFile­Z is available for Firefox, Chromium and lots of Chromium-based browsers such as Vivaldi and Edge. The extension examines the current page view, crawls it with a minimal depth (‘1), collects all assets and packs everything into a self-extractabl­e HTML file. This file opens a page that visually matches the original in all cases, yet it loads entirely offline.

We tested SingleFile­Z in different scenarios and it never failed. If given a Google map or a playing video, then the extension will take a snapshot of a page and recreate a still page. All buttons, sliders and other controls will be in place, but the dynamic elements will be unavailabl­e – you won’t be able to drag a map or move a video progress slider, for example. Everything fits into just one HTML file because it’s also a ZIP archive. Change the file extension from .html to .zip and open it with any archive manager to access the files inside. All images, scripts, fonts and more is sorted by SingleFile­Z and put in order inside that archive. The HTML/ZIP files produced by SingleFile­Z are more convenient to use than both old MHTML and alternativ­e third-party formats. Whatever artwork, font or image is used on a web page, it can be quickly located and extracted from the archive.

 ??  ?? Don’t miss the extension’s settings for a wealth of extras, like password protection, font embedding and more.
Don’t miss the extension’s settings for a wealth of extras, like password protection, font embedding and more.

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