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Comment by IanCal | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to have a format that is just HTML + whatever zipped up that browsers and operating systems happily just open in a browser.

I like making HTML reports (rmarkdown), but sharing them requires telling people to download then open them in a browser. Google drive, for example, happily just shows you a preview but then if you click on the file you get raw html. Customers just don't understand.

PDF however, is absolutely fine to move around as a single chunk, but has problems in almost every other way.

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> I'd love to have a format that is just HTML + whatever zipped up that browsers and operating systems happily just open in a browser.

There is MHTML, sadly it fails the second bit because AFAIK Chrome dropped its support and FF and Safari can't open it natively. Apple has its own WebArchive format, and Firefox's MAF extension generated MAFF file but is not compatible with newer versions.

At one point in time, I thought MHTML was precisely what we need to get rid of PDF, double click, and everything works. Sadly everyone abandoned it, and Google doesn't want you to have down any webpage for archiving purpose.

Chrome supports MHTML as an experimental feature. Visit chrome://flags/#save-page-as-mhtml in Chrome to enable it.

I wish there was an agreed-upon standard format that had cross-browser support.

> I'd love to have a format that is just HTML + whatever zipped up that browsers and operating systems happily just open in a browser.

Does HTML with data URIs meet these criteria?

That part works fine actually and is how I usually generate them, the problem is that then I need to tell people to download and open specifically in a browser. If they see previews in something like google drive, they see raw HTML.

Technically, all this is fine - the problem comes entirely from not having a nice agreed way of opening them. Which makes it more frustrating.

File > Save As... > Web Archive

I don't think you read the comment.

That, in chrome, generates an html file and another folder. I would need to tell users to download the html file, download the folder, put them in the same place and open it in chrome. If I put it on google drive to share it, they'll just be shown raw html unless they then download and open it.

I also tested it on a page using chrome and it didn't properly load the pictures.

Works great in Safari. Generates a single file that loads into the browser. Can be shared like any other file.

Can it be shared to a non-Mac, or is it a bundle (directory) that Safari has special support for navigating?

No idea. The few times I've used it, it's always been sent to other Mac users using Safari because their IT department doesn't let them use Chrome.

I'd be surprised if there isn't a similar Chrome feature. Chrome and Firefox usually have all the bells and whistles.

WebArchive uses Cocoa binary object serialization and is supported only by Safari.

I just tried it in safari and it generates something that doesn't open in chrome, and when I click on the file alone I get a warning that it "can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer".

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