6 ms·

Author here, it makes me really happy to see SIngleFile on the front page of HN. Thank you! I take the opportunity to make you aware of the upcoming impacts of

by gildas 5y ago

Author here, it makes me really happy to see SIngleFile on the front page of HN. Thank you! I take the opportunity to make you aware of the upcoming impacts of the Manifest V3 [1], and for those who prefer zip files, I recommend you to have a look here [2]. [1] https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile-Lite https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile-Lite [2] https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFileZ https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFileZ

williamdclt 5y ago
Thank you for your work! I've been using start.me for my new tab page (it's the page you see every single time you open a tab, I can't believe most people don't make it useful), but it's way too slow so I SingleFile it and have a local Firefox extension to set it as my new tab page. It's too complicated but at least it works!
rahimnathwani 5y ago
If I start using SingleFile today, will I still be open saved pages after the update to Manifest V3? I mean, if I want to save pages over the next 11 months, should I install SinglePage or SinglePage-lite?
- gildas 5y ago
  In fact, you simply do not need an extension to open pages saved with SingleFile (or SingleFile Lite) because they are standard HTML pages. So you don't have to worry about that.
  - warmwaffles 5y ago
    This alone is fantastic. I've been looking for an mhtml replacement that worked well across all browsers.
mieko 5y ago
Thanks for this project. I found SingleFile a year or two ago, and used it to take "HTML Screenshots" of third party sites I could embed in guided walkthroughs with modified/example data changed, instead of just PNGs. SingleFile was ultra-valuable for this. If anyone has a similar use-case, I wrote some pretty rough (and slow) code to post-process SingleFile's output to remove any HTML that wasn't contributing to the presentational render by launching puppeteer and comparing pixels. It's available here: https://github.com/mieko/trailcap https://github.com/mieko/trailcap
- gildas 5y ago
  It's interesting! I had started something similar as part of testing but hadn't really finished my work. I will have a look at your project.
- MandieD 5y ago
  Oh, that’s such a good idea for documentation - thanks for sharing!
- bscphil 5y ago
  One very useful thing you could add to this (if you feel like it) would be to make it work with snapshotted directories, rather than a single HTML file with inlined data. You can get the former with SingleFileZ and then extracting the resulting zip file. I like these because it makes it easier for me to make manual edits when necessary and it's a better solution for long term archiving (IMO). But I would love to add your project to my workflow.
badsectoracula 5y ago
Single File is one of my favorite addons since it allows me to keep offline copies of articles, tutorials, etc i see online without losing images, etc (there have been a ton of articles lost over the years and while some are preserved in archive.org, they often lack things like images, etc, so i prefer to save anything i come across). So thank you for making it :-). Now, having said that, the text in SingleFile-Lite's "Notable features of SingleFile Lite" sound like a list of issues :-P. It looks like these are issues with Chrome, but do you know if/how these "improvements" will affect Firefox?
- wabarc 5y ago
  You might be interested in https://github.com/wabarc/wayback https://github.com/wabarc/wayback, a chat-based archiving tool.
- gildas 5y ago
  AFAIK, for the moment Mozilla is aware of the regressions that Manifest V3 causes and shows a good will to try to reduce them as much as possible. You can find some information about this here https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/tree/main/_minutes https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/tree/main/_minutes
- saaspirant 5y ago
  I use archivebox(Django-based) for keeping offline copies (which uses SingleFile and few other libs in backend) https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ https://github.com/ArchiveBox/
hrgiger 5y ago
Thanks for the work you have done, its a lazy man heaven especially for bulk downloads and helped me a lot. About a month ago I have decided to backup my bookmarks via archivebox, it was more than 1k bookmarks, most reliable methods were singlefile and wget.
- 87x06 5y ago
stragio 5y ago
Very nice! Will use it for sure. May I ask you how you created that good looking demo gif?
- gildas 5y ago
  I used: - ScreenToGif to record video sequences and produce the final GIF: https://www.screentogif.com/ https://www.screentogif.com/ - Macro Recorder to record and replay user navigation: https://www.macrorecorder.com/ https://www.macrorecorder.com/ - Blender to edit the video, add text comments, and make the intro: https://www.blender.org/ https://www.blender.org/
  - e19293001 5y ago
    Thank you for sharing!
aantix 5y ago
Is it possible to use this within the context of the current web page, without the extension portion? Taking a snapshot of my user's screen and then display it to them later (maybe in an iFrame)?
- gildas 5y ago
  It's possible but it's a bit limited. It won't be able for example to save images coming from a different origin.
gwbas1c 5y ago
FYI: Figure tags don't convert their hrefs to base64. For example, try saving my home page: https://andrewrondeau.herokuapp.com/ https://andrewrondeau.herokuapp.com/ The img tags are converted correctly, but there's still <figure class=image><a href="https://andrewrondeau.herokuapp.com/ https://andrewrondeau.herokuapp.com/... in the single HTML file.
- gildas 5y ago
  I cannot reproduce your issue, I just did a test on this page and I see the expected `<img src="data:image/jpeg;base64,...` in the saved page.
  - gwbas1c 5y ago
    Look for figure tags, not image tags Even better, just search for ="http
    - gildas 5y ago
      All I can find is a <a> tag. Edit: I think I now understand the issue. I confirm SingleFile saves only the current page and not linked images, for example.
austincheney 5y ago
Twelve year project with nearly 7000 commits shows a lot of dedication. Good work.
JeremyNT 5y ago
I've been using SingleFile for the last year or so, it's amazing! I'm going to hijack your post for a question! I love the way you can use the editor and select "format for better readability," then save just the stripped down version of the page. I use this to send it to my e-ink device. The question I have is whether it's possible to toggle the default save to use the formatted version automatically? I dug into the options and didn't turn anything up!
- gildas 5y ago
  You can enable these options for this: - Annotation editor > default mode > edit the page - Annotation editor > annotate the page before saving
  - gildas 5y ago
    Sorry, I was wrong, you have to select "format the page" instead of "edit the page" (first item).
cloudwizard 5y ago
Is there a configuration for the zip version where I can avoid duplicating the static assets? Thanks
- gildas 5y ago
  I guess you're referring to SingleFileZ. This option is not needed because zip files (i.e. what SingleFileZ produces) already provide this feature.
joisig 5y ago
Thank you for the Manifest V3 critique, the examples you give make it really clear how many things are regressing with this upcoming change :/
narag 5y ago
Thank you, very useful and works like a charm: a must have.
0184c 5y ago
graderjs 5y ago
Well done, gildas! You have really built a quality product and marketed your work well.
- gildas 5y ago
  Thank you Cris!
- unicornporn 5y ago
  I love it and use it. But product? Nothing is being sold and product sounds almost condescending. :)
  - graderjs 5y ago
    > But product? Nothing is being sold and product sounds almost condescending. :) Really!? You don't think it's trying to be condescending to try to find criticism on someone's praise, haha? Heh, aanyway :) You feel product is bad!? So weird!! I guess you find there what you bring to it. Wonder what you're protecting there, if you share more of your thinking, we can do know you more. Even so, I think we can just celebrate gildas' achievement! :)

by gildas 5y ago

williamdclt 5y ago

Thank you for your work! I've been using start.me for my new tab page (it's the page you see every single time you open a tab, I can't believe most people don't make it useful), but it's way too slow so I SingleFile it and have a local Firefox extension to set it as my new tab page. It's too complicated but at least it works!

rahimnathwani 5y ago

If I start using SingleFile today, will I still be open saved pages after the update to Manifest V3? I mean, if I want to save pages over the next 11 months, should I install SinglePage or SinglePage-lite?

gildas 5y ago
In fact, you simply do not need an extension to open pages saved with SingleFile (or SingleFile Lite) because they are standard HTML pages. So you don't have to worry about that.
- warmwaffles 5y ago
  This alone is fantastic. I've been looking for an mhtml replacement that worked well across all browsers.

mieko 5y ago

Thanks for this project. I found SingleFile a year or two ago, and used it to take "HTML Screenshots" of third party sites I could embed in guided walkthroughs with modified/example data changed, instead of just PNGs. SingleFile was ultra-valuable for this. If anyone has a similar use-case, I wrote some pretty rough (and slow) code to post-process SingleFile's output to remove any HTML that wasn't contributing to the presentational render by launching puppeteer and comparing pixels. It's available here: https://github.com/mieko/trailcap https://github.com/mieko/trailcap

gildas 5y ago
It's interesting! I had started something similar as part of testing but hadn't really finished my work. I will have a look at your project.
MandieD 5y ago
Oh, that’s such a good idea for documentation - thanks for sharing!
bscphil 5y ago
One very useful thing you could add to this (if you feel like it) would be to make it work with snapshotted directories, rather than a single HTML file with inlined data. You can get the former with SingleFileZ and then extracting the resulting zip file. I like these because it makes it easier for me to make manual edits when necessary and it's a better solution for long term archiving (IMO). But I would love to add your project to my workflow.

badsectoracula 5y ago

Single File is one of my favorite addons since it allows me to keep offline copies of articles, tutorials, etc i see online without losing images, etc (there have been a ton of articles lost over the years and while some are preserved in archive.org, they often lack things like images, etc, so i prefer to save anything i come across). So thank you for making it :-). Now, having said that, the text in SingleFile-Lite's "Notable features of SingleFile Lite" sound like a list of issues :-P. It looks like these are issues with Chrome, but do you know if/how these "improvements" will affect Firefox?

wabarc 5y ago
You might be interested in https://github.com/wabarc/wayback https://github.com/wabarc/wayback, a chat-based archiving tool.
gildas 5y ago
AFAIK, for the moment Mozilla is aware of the regressions that Manifest V3 causes and shows a good will to try to reduce them as much as possible. You can find some information about this here https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/tree/main/_minutes https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/tree/main/_minutes
saaspirant 5y ago
I use archivebox(Django-based) for keeping offline copies (which uses SingleFile and few other libs in backend) https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ https://github.com/ArchiveBox/

hrgiger 5y ago

Thanks for the work you have done, its a lazy man heaven especially for bulk downloads and helped me a lot. About a month ago I have decided to backup my bookmarks via archivebox, it was more than 1k bookmarks, most reliable methods were singlefile and wget.

87x06 5y ago

stragio 5y ago

Very nice! Will use it for sure. May I ask you how you created that good looking demo gif?

gildas 5y ago
I used: - ScreenToGif to record video sequences and produce the final GIF: https://www.screentogif.com/ https://www.screentogif.com/ - Macro Recorder to record and replay user navigation: https://www.macrorecorder.com/ https://www.macrorecorder.com/ - Blender to edit the video, add text comments, and make the intro: https://www.blender.org/ https://www.blender.org/
- e19293001 5y ago
  Thank you for sharing!

aantix 5y ago

Is it possible to use this within the context of the current web page, without the extension portion? Taking a snapshot of my user's screen and then display it to them later (maybe in an iFrame)?

gildas 5y ago
It's possible but it's a bit limited. It won't be able for example to save images coming from a different origin.

gwbas1c 5y ago

FYI: Figure tags don't convert their hrefs to base64. For example, try saving my home page: https://andrewrondeau.herokuapp.com/ https://andrewrondeau.herokuapp.com/ The img tags are converted correctly, but there's still <figure class=image><a href="https://andrewrondeau.herokuapp.com/ https://andrewrondeau.herokuapp.com/... in the single HTML file.

gildas 5y ago
I cannot reproduce your issue, I just did a test on this page and I see the expected `<img src="data:image/jpeg;base64,...` in the saved page.
- gwbas1c 5y ago
  Look for figure tags, not image tags Even better, just search for ="http
  - gildas 5y ago
    All I can find is a <a> tag. Edit: I think I now understand the issue. I confirm SingleFile saves only the current page and not linked images, for example.

austincheney 5y ago

Twelve year project with nearly 7000 commits shows a lot of dedication. Good work.

JeremyNT 5y ago

I've been using SingleFile for the last year or so, it's amazing! I'm going to hijack your post for a question! I love the way you can use the editor and select "format for better readability," then save just the stripped down version of the page. I use this to send it to my e-ink device. The question I have is whether it's possible to toggle the default save to use the formatted version automatically? I dug into the options and didn't turn anything up!

gildas 5y ago
You can enable these options for this: - Annotation editor > default mode > edit the page - Annotation editor > annotate the page before saving
- gildas 5y ago
  Sorry, I was wrong, you have to select "format the page" instead of "edit the page" (first item).

cloudwizard 5y ago

Is there a configuration for the zip version where I can avoid duplicating the static assets? Thanks

gildas 5y ago
I guess you're referring to SingleFileZ. This option is not needed because zip files (i.e. what SingleFileZ produces) already provide this feature.

joisig 5y ago

Thank you for the Manifest V3 critique, the examples you give make it really clear how many things are regressing with this upcoming change :/

narag 5y ago

Thank you, very useful and works like a charm: a must have.

0184c 5y ago

graderjs 5y ago

Well done, gildas! You have really built a quality product and marketed your work well.

gildas 5y ago
Thank you Cris!
unicornporn 5y ago
I love it and use it. But product? Nothing is being sold and product sounds almost condescending. :)
- graderjs 5y ago
  > But product? Nothing is being sold and product sounds almost condescending. :) Really!? You don't think it's trying to be condescending to try to find criticism on someone's praise, haha? Heh, aanyway :) You feel product is bad!? So weird!! I guess you find there what you bring to it. Wonder what you're protecting there, if you share more of your thinking, we can do know you more. Even so, I think we can just celebrate gildas' achievement! :)