4 ms·

I really wish that browsers had developed first-class support for offline web page bundles. There's no way to share a page that is guaranteed to be self-contain

by jml7c5 2y ago

I really wish that browsers had developed first-class support for offline web page bundles. There's no way to share a page that is guaranteed to be self-contained and not hit the network, especially if you want to use javascript. It's particularly frustrating since browsers supported offline mode as far back as the 90s; it just needed to be combined with support for loading from zipped folders. That simple change would've largely solved the academic paper problem decades ago. It's bizarre that it still isn't a feature.

simonw 2y ago
One option her is to inline all assets - images etc - as bas64 URIs. The HTML page ends up huge but it will at least be self-contained.
- jml7c5 2y ago
  Yes, but it's not guaranteed to be self-contained. I wouldn't want to open a random HTML file knowing that it could phone home, or that the content might break one day without me realizing. There's a practical and psychological aspect to sharing `steves_paper_2014.html` versus `steves_paper_2014.offlinesitebundle`. The latter feels safe and immutable.
  - irq-1 2y ago
    What you want is an HTML tag or response header that restricts network access, which the browser can then enforce. Offline or a list of allowed domains, this would be great for security in general. Not so great for advertisers though.
    - mewpmewp2 2y ago
      Then you have to verify that the tag is there, right? But if it has another extension like .offlinebundle you can know thay browsers will not make any extra requests.
abelcha 2y ago
this is what you are looking for i believe (web archive format) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WARC_(file_format)?oldformat=true https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WARC_(file_format)?oldformat=t...
- jml7c5 2y ago
  Browsers don't have native support for opening WARC. It doesn't solve the safety problem either: you can still construct a WARC that phones home, AFAIK. It's a great format for the problem it solves, but if browsers supported offline-only files the container format wouldn't (and shouldn't) need to be that complicated.
smsm42 2y ago
Mail clients kinda do that (or at least they can, if asked to). Also, why would academic papers need JS anyway? CSS and images, I can get, but beyond that there's no need for anything fancier.

by jml7c5 2y ago

simonw 2y ago

One option her is to inline all assets - images etc - as bas64 URIs. The HTML page ends up huge but it will at least be self-contained.

jml7c5 2y ago
Yes, but it's not guaranteed to be self-contained. I wouldn't want to open a random HTML file knowing that it could phone home, or that the content might break one day without me realizing. There's a practical and psychological aspect to sharing `steves_paper_2014.html` versus `steves_paper_2014.offlinesitebundle`. The latter feels safe and immutable.
- irq-1 2y ago
  What you want is an HTML tag or response header that restricts network access, which the browser can then enforce. Offline or a list of allowed domains, this would be great for security in general. Not so great for advertisers though.
  - mewpmewp2 2y ago
    Then you have to verify that the tag is there, right? But if it has another extension like .offlinebundle you can know thay browsers will not make any extra requests.

abelcha 2y ago

this is what you are looking for i believe (web archive format) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WARC_(file_format)?oldformat=true https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WARC_(file_format)?oldformat=t...

jml7c5 2y ago
Browsers don't have native support for opening WARC. It doesn't solve the safety problem either: you can still construct a WARC that phones home, AFAIK. It's a great format for the problem it solves, but if browsers supported offline-only files the container format wouldn't (and shouldn't) need to be that complicated.

smsm42 2y ago

Mail clients kinda do that (or at least they can, if asked to). Also, why would academic papers need JS anyway? CSS and images, I can get, but beyond that there's no need for anything fancier.