MHTML Format - Web Archive Files - Standard not supported in Firefox

Bug #240133 reported by peter
24
This bug affects 3 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Mozilla Firefox
Won't Fix
Medium
firefox (Ubuntu)
Triaged
Wishlist
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

this location http://www.militarybadges.org.uk/badget11.mht

displays
This document is a Web archive file. If you are seeing this message, this means your browser or editor doesn't support Web archive files. For more information on the Web archive format, go to http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/office/webarchive.htm

I am using ubuntu 8.04

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Jun 15 10:28:40 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: firefox-3.0 3.0~rc1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-18-generic i686

WORKAROUND <Thanks Thomas>:
http://www.unmht.org/unmht/en_index.html

Tags: apport-bug
Revision history for this message
In , Sidr (sidr) wrote :

Copied the following comment from bug 17309 (cc-ing contributor):
>------ Additional Comments From <email address hidden> 11/13/99 07:03 ------
>Authors could add the proprietary "important" keyword to the list of keywords
>in the rel attribute of the link element, e.g., rel="important stylesheet" (or
>rel="stylesheet important") to do what you want without resorting to RFC2557.

Yes, they could, but they would have no guarantee that Mozilla or any other
browser would either interpret that they way they want or implement the
behaviour they want in response, nor that a future version would not do
something slightly or markedly different.

Providing an rfc2557 MHTML mechanism would take care of the extreme case,
leaving room for a reasonable policy for "important stylesheet" that would
not necessarily mean "absolutely required" from this point forward.

Having said that, I absolutely would not advocate MHTML in the browser as the
*only* mechanism provided to authors to indicate how important or necessary
a stylesheet is, lest this feature get thought of by anyone as the only way
to go. I'd go so far as to say don't add the feature if nothing else is
provided as a fix for bug 17309.

Revision history for this message
In , Leger-formerly-netscape (leger-formerly-netscape) wrote :

Bulk move of all Necko (to be deleted component) bugs to new Networking

component.

Revision history for this message
In , Gagan-formerly-netscape (gagan-formerly-netscape) wrote :

->ruslan

Revision history for this message
In , Ruslan-formerly-netscape (ruslan-formerly-netscape) wrote :

I don't know how easy it'll be implement. Basically when we open the channel -
we would ask for /foo.html. If that contains 3 htmls, but not one - we'll have
to invent a way to deal with it.

Revision history for this message
In , Ruslan-formerly-netscape (ruslan-formerly-netscape) wrote :

Per warren's decision -> nobody

Revision history for this message
In , Leger-formerly-netscape (leger-formerly-netscape) wrote :

Putting on [nsbeta2-] radar.

Revision history for this message
In , L. David Baron (dbaron) wrote :

Marking helpwanted since that's what I think was meant by "-> nobody".

Revision history for this message
In , Benc-meer (benc-meer) wrote :

Open Networking bugs, qa=tever -> qa to me.

Revision history for this message
In , Peter-lairo (peter-lairo) wrote :

This sounds like it would be a MAJOR step toward being able to save (and send)
entire HTML pages as ONE file to disk - great.

Suggest keyword: mozilla0.9.2

Revision history for this message
In , Peter-lairo (peter-lairo) wrote :

I created a tracking (meta) bug 82118 to track these kinds of bugs and to unify
the efforts.

Maybe a few duplicates will also become aparent this way - then we can assign
the keyword MostFreq.

Revision history for this message
In , Alex-mozillazine (alex-mozillazine) wrote :

Removing dependancy to bug 82118 as it should be the other way round (bug 82118
depends on this bug).

Revision history for this message
In , C-c07 (c-c07) wrote :

I'll try to implement this, but I do not know yet if I really have the skills
to do it. Be prepared that I may have to give this back to <email address hidden>.

My plan is roughly this:

- Implement a mhtml: protocol handler similar to the jar: handler.
- Implement a stream converter similar to the multipart/x-mixed-replace converter.
- Implement a method to control pending loads.

The stream converter would return the root resource within a mhtml channel and
put the other parts into a cache. On every page load we'd have to check if the
referring URI has a mhtml scheme and if so, translate the URI to be loaded into
a mhtml: URI.

The mhtml channel would simply fetch from cache if the requested resource is
available. If the containing multipart resource is still loading, it would
wait until it becomes available. If the requested resource wasn't included in
the multipart resource, try to get it using the original URI.

If the requested resource isn't in the cache and the containing multipart
resource is not currently loading, we'd have to load it using basically the same
mechanism the stream converter is using.

Revision history for this message
In , C-c07 (c-c07) wrote :

Assign to myself, not nobody.

Revision history for this message
In , Ian-hixie (ian-hixie) wrote :

Why do you need a new protocol handler? If I go to
   http://www.example.org/mydocument.mhtml
...I would want it to display right without changing the URI.

BTW, if you _do_ use your own protocol, then it should be called 'moz-mhtml' o
whatever, so as not to polute the protocol namespace.

Revision history for this message
In , C-c07 (c-c07) wrote :

Ian, somehow we must remember that we have an MHTML document if we don't want to
rewrite its links. URIs in MHTML documents can be the same as existing URIs
outside the MHTML document. If we rewrite the links (e.g. convert them to <cid:>
URIs) it is very likely that we break at least some JS.

It may be possible to keep the original URI for the root resource, but it would
require more changes to docshell. I do not intend to implement this in the first
step. Please file a bug on it once MHTML works.

If we display a resource other than the root resource (e.g. open a frame in a
new window), it does not make sense to keep the original URI and it does not
make sense to show the given URI, because the displayed document may be
different from a document with the same URI retrieved directly over the net.
Another approach would be to generate a Content-ID ourselves if the MHTML
document doesn't specify it and use <cid:> instead of <mhtml:>. But that would
be much more difficult to implement.

Name of the protocol: We do already pollute the protocol namespace (<jar:>,
<view-source:>, <about:>, <internal:>, <chrome:>, <resource:>, <javascript:>).
But if you think we shouldn't continue this it would be no problem to use
<moz-mhtml:>.

Revision history for this message
In , C-c07 (c-c07) wrote :

A clarification: If http://www.example.org/mydocument.mhtml has Content-Type:
multipart/related you could of course type that URI into the URL bar or use it
in a link. But it would then change to
mhtml:http://www.example.org/mydocument.mhtml!/ or
mhtml:http://www.example.org/mydocument.mhtml!/http://another.example.com/
(if the root resource has Content-Location: http://another.example.com/ ).
This is similar to an HTTP redirection.

Revision history for this message
In , Sidr (sidr) wrote :

Clarence, first, thanks for giving this a try. From a quick look at my inbox,
at least some HTML mail uses multipart/related, instead of multipart/mixed,
so MailNews may already have some of the code you need.

As a start, try this LXR query:
  http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/search?string=multipart%2Frelated
and especially look at
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/mailnews/mime/src/mimemrel.cpp#29
and following, where <email address hidden> has some implementation notes about
how to handle multipart/related data.

Revision history for this message
In , C-c07 (c-c07) wrote :

I know the MHTML code for mail. But I think it needs nearly a complete rewrite
to work outside of mail and to support all HTML features (e.g. frames).
The first implementation note in mimemrel.cpp describes basically the way I'm
going to implement this.

Revision history for this message
In , Tomer Cohen (tomer-gmx) wrote :

What's going on with this bug?

Revision history for this message
In , 2009-bugzilla (2009-bugzilla) wrote :

*** Bug 108329 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Revision history for this message
In , Mporta (mporta) wrote :

now i see that this bug is targetted for mozilla 1.1
i really hope that it won't be postponed again.
thanks.

Revision history for this message
In , Stig-moz (stig-moz) wrote :

I'm finding content on the net encoded in this format with .mht file
extensions...and I'd like to use the format myself to encapsulate saved web
pages...hmmmmmmmmm, for that matter, file->"save as" {c,sh}ould save the file
and it's images in one blob. this seems like a half-decent-enough format
(except that it mime-encodes images so they bloat)...okay, then .mht.gz...(yeah,
there's .war too [from konqueror])

Revision history for this message
In , Stephan-email (stephan-email) wrote :

target milestone 1.1alpha is out of date...
Is there any progress going on?

Revision history for this message
In , Bzbarsky (bzbarsky) wrote :

*** Bug 176054 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Revision history for this message
In , Bzbarsky (bzbarsky) wrote :

*** Bug 177713 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Revision history for this message
In , Benc-meer (benc-meer) wrote :

Is this networking of file handling?

Revision history for this message
In , volkris (volkris) wrote :

Pardon me if I'm wrong, but it seems to be that this is under both networking
and filehandling.

My main want is to be able to open a single file (whether it be downloaded from
an ftp site or opened from my desktop) with all graphics, stylesheets, and html
included.

Revision history for this message
In , 3-14 (3-14) wrote :

Is there a testcase available somewhere?

pi

Revision history for this message
In , Lapsap7+mz (lapsap7+mz) wrote :

Sorry, I haven't (time to) read RFC2557, but I'd like to make a wish:
when MHTML is opened (in browser), it would be nice if the From, Date, etc
fields aren't displayed.

Excuse-me if this wish isn't adequate and doesn't seem to be within topic of
this bug because my bug got being marked as a dup of this.

Revision history for this message
In , Test2345 (test2345) wrote :

Created an attachment (id=113008)
This Page as MS MHTML

This page saved with MS IExplorer (6)

Revision history for this message
In , Test2345 (test2345) wrote :

Created an attachment (id=113016)
More Complex Testcase with Frames

After upgrading from MS Internet-Exploder to Mozilla (security reasons) I
really miss the MS-Feature of saving complete Webpages into one single File.
With a huge collection of documents on your hard drive it matters very much how
the files are organized and structured. I hope this issue will get a higher
priority. I wonder why Netscape/Mozilla did not make a progress in that
direction for years.
Frank

Revision history for this message
In , volkris (volkris) wrote :

One of the main reasons I want such a thing is so that I can use Mozilla and its
composer for writing general reports.

Basically I propose that there are few examples of report styles, formats, and
uses that wouldn't be entirely handled by HTML/XML/CSS/etc. There just aren't
any particularly good front ends for writing these reports.

Anyway, I want to be able to view, print, and edit my reports on computers
without bothering with a word processor at all. I SHOULDN'T need anything other
than Mozilla, but this bug makes transmission of such documents more cumbersome.

In the end this is one of those feature requests where the potential uses are
nearly limitless in number.

Revision history for this message
In , Thoste (thoste) wrote :

I tried out Mozilla a couple of times. But the most important reason for me to
stay with IntExp is the lack of saving web pages into a single file.
I wonder wether there is no progress on this topic for years.
It should be easy to implement this feature in comparison to other projected
items on the todo list.

Thomas

Revision history for this message
In , Goa-ifrance (goa-ifrance) wrote :

As a developer I can tell you it's not that easy ! However I think Mozilla
developers could use some help so here goes a useful link :
http://www.codeproject.com/shell/IESaveAs.asp

The article contains useful information about IE and its so famous (^^) save as
MHTML feature . Developers should also read the user comments.

Revision history for this message
In , Wasti-redl (wasti-redl) wrote :

>somehow we must remember that we have an MHTML document if we don't want to
>rewrite its links. URIs in MHTML documents can be the same as existing URIs
>outside the MHTML document. If we rewrite the links (e.g. convert them to <cid:>
>URIs) it is very likely that we break at least some JS.

How does IE do it?

Revision history for this message
In , Pedro-lamarao (pedro-lamarao) wrote :

Me, and my employer, are interested in the implementation of this feature.
If there is no one working on it, or if there is someone working on this having
trouble, I'd like to give it a try.
So, feel free to contact me with pointers about how to go about it.

Revision history for this message
In , Test2345 (test2345) wrote :

I changed from IE to Mozilla just for security reasons. I'm still missing this
nice MHTML feature. There are many HTML documents with important inline
graphics, like pages with embedded math formulas as GIF or graphs.
For me it's not important that all features of a web page are preserved.
Javascript can be broken, that's not important to me as it's used mostly for
advertisements. Also I don't care much about CSS as the content is more
important to me as a correct layout. This topic is discussed now for more than 4
years. So, maybe a simple approach at the beginning would be sufficient. The
mail component is using already a similar functionality. Javacript/CSS, external
Link and Layout optimizations can be made later.

Revision history for this message
In , Bijumaillist (bijumaillist) wrote :

(In reply to comment #37)
> I changed from IE to Mozilla just for security reasons. I'm still missing this
> nice MHTML feature. There are many HTML documents with important inline
> graphics, like pages with embedded math formulas as GIF or graphs.
> For me it's not important that all features of a web page are preserved.

Actually Moz… is at least capable of viewing *.mht files created by IE. I tried
following.

1. in IE. Opened a web page with graphics
2. saved it as *.mht file
3. Opened a new message in Thunderbird
4. Attached the *.mht file
5. save the message as draft
6. view the saved draft message in preview pane
7. I am able to see the complete web page with graphics and css

If Thunderbird is capable of viewing a *.mht Mozilla.org has code to show it in
the browser.

But I dont whether there is code to save it!!

Alternative, Mozilla is capable of viewing contents inside a zip file (including
pages with graphics and css). So why not make a XPCOM component to update zip,
then extension developers can use that to make a single file achieving facility.

See topic http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=442473

Revision history for this message
In , Test2345 (test2345) wrote :

When I should make a ranking about the most important improvements in Mozilla
browser, this one would be on Nr. 1.
I like mozilla, but not for the fact that it makes my document folders
absolutely chaotic with all the subfolders of page contents - really stupid.
Maybe we should convince some active developers to look at this issue and forget
about other things like making Mozilla look even more beautiful. Unfortunately
the Internet Explorer is no alternative to me because of the security problems.
Otherwise I would have changed back again, because IE is able to properly save
web pages.

Revision history for this message
In , Bijumaillist (bijumaillist) wrote :

At present mozilla allow to view STUFF from a zip file.
STUFF may be a web page saved as "Web page, complete" format.

see following

jar:http://www.geocities.com/bijumaillist/mozilla/mozilla.zip!/mozilla.htm

(if your are unable to see it try
http://geocities.com/bijumaillist/go.html#jar:http://www.geocities.com/bijumaillist/mozilla/mozilla.zip!/mozilla.htm
or the snipped url http://snipurl.com/56pg )

Now all we need is an option to zip the contents of "Web page, complete" format
while saving.

(PS: at present the mozilla zip services dont allow to add/update file in a zip
file)

one advatage of zip format over mhtm is we can access content using any ziptool
and it is a non XML format.
disadvantage is zip file format dont store mime-type info of contained files
to resolve this we could store an additional content list file (say content.lst)
which list file names inside the archive and its mime-type.
content.lst should also contain an entry to indicate the root html file.
content.lst should NOT be in XML format.
XML is difficult to process using shell script

Changed in firefox-3.0:
status: New → Invalid
Changed in firefox:
status: Unknown → Confirmed
Changed in firefox-3.0:
status: Invalid → Confirmed
44 comments hidden view all 124 comments
Revision history for this message
In , Acelists (acelists) wrote :

Hi, is it correct that this bug is in the 'Networking' component?

Revision history for this message
In , Hfwong1 (hfwong1) wrote :

When can this bug be finally fixed?

Revision history for this message
In , Mogul-mozilla (mogul-mozilla) wrote :

Those who are still running into periodic need to view .mht files (like those my HR insists on sending me when they find a resume for me on the web) may be interested to know about this add-on:
http://www.unmht.org/unmht/en_index.html

I'm not sure when it came on the scene, but it's now indispensible... Seemed to work pretty well in all occasions I've had to try it so far.

Revision history for this message
In , Matti-mversen (matti-mversen) wrote :

*** Bug 471270 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Revision history for this message
John Vivirito (gnomefreak) wrote : Re: "If you are seeing this message, this means your browser or editor doesn't support Web archive files"

Are you still able to reproduce this bug?

Revision history for this message
Micah Gersten (micahg) wrote : Re: MHTML Format - Web Archive Files - not supported in Firefox

@John Vivirito
This hasn't been fixed as of FF 3.5b5pre

description: updated
summary: - "If you are seeing this message, this means your browser or editor
- doesn't support Web archive files"
+ MHTML Format - Web Archive Files - not supported in Firefox
Changed in firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Low
status: Confirmed → Triaged
Revision history for this message
In , Mardeg (mardeg) wrote :

*** Bug 509285 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Revision history for this message
Micah Gersten (micahg) wrote : Re: MHTML Format - Web Archive Files - not supported in Firefox

Firefox 3.0 is only receiving Security Updates and major bug fixes at this point.

Changed in firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu):
importance: Low → Wishlist
status: Triaged → Won't Fix
Revision history for this message
Micah Gersten (micahg) wrote :

Moving tracking to Firefox 3.5

Changed in firefox-3.5 (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
status: New → Triaged
Revision history for this message
In , Lapsap7+mz (lapsap7+mz) wrote :

Just tried the add-on. I have to give it a "thumb up"!
... Although there's pitfall to avoid: conflict with "IE tab" and have to disable a special URL. It's written in the webpage... at about the very last part of it (not easy to spot it if one has no idea what to look for)

Revision history for this message
In , Kevin Brosnan (kbrosnan) wrote :

*** Bug 538108 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Revision history for this message
In , Davian818 (davian818) wrote :

I need that feature.

Revision history for this message
In , Bugzilla2010 (bugzilla2010) wrote :

I think this bug after 11 years should be WONTFIX, given the addon mentioned in comment 78 works great, and this is clearly not on the developers' priority list. I voted for it but I'm well aware that this is not a feature wanted or needed by the vast majority of users. Parity with IE is not always a good enough reason to spend time developing a feature. Especially when there are addons capable of doing the job.

Revision history for this message
In , Bugzilla2007 (bugzilla2007) wrote :

(in reply to comment 84)
I doubt very much that a bug with as many as 165 votes, continuous requests for a period of 11 years so far and with recent duplicates still coming in is a likely candidate for wontfix. Maybe fix would be better.

Addons can't replace vital core functionality. Many users will never bother installing addons, but they still need and expect the functionality.

Michael, where's your data to show this isn't needed by many users?

Finally, please consider that the lack of "parity with IE" in this case means that users who already use Firefox might be tempted to switch back to IE both for viewing and saving all-in-one rfc2557 MHTML files. I'll take it a step further and state that both MHTML and .maff format should be natively supported by the browser. Only after many years of using FF did I discover .maff add-on, and I'm not very shy of addons. Current default of saving html pages as a "file + loads of files in subfolder" set is very impractical and resource-wasting. Let alone all the problems you can get when copying over-long file paths resulting from saved html files. Mozilla should really do better.

Revision history for this message
In , Bugzilla2007 (bugzilla2007) wrote :

(In repetition of comment #76)
> Is it correct that this bug is in the 'Networking' component?

Revision history for this message
In , Barebonesphoto (barebonesphoto) wrote :

MHTML is not an approved standard. It is a Microsoft idea that other browser developers have followed. Whether Firefox follows the trend or not is a choice. If they don't, it is not a bug. We already have Zip to archive web pages and related objects. Using an add-on to do the archive from within Firefox is a convenience not a bug fix.

Revision history for this message
In , Peter-lairo (peter-lairo) wrote :

(In reply to comment #87)
> it is not a bug.
> is a convenience not a bug fix.

That is why this "bug" is an "enhancement" (with 164 votes).

Revision history for this message
In , Laughing-john (laughing-john) wrote :

165 Votes!

I don't really care who invented it or whether it is a bug or an enhancement. All

I know is it's something I would find very very useful and I would really like to see it integrated into FF.

The reason I don't 'need' it is because I just use Internet Explorer every time I want to save a single page as MHTML, but I'd rather not have to do that! In an ideal world all browsers would support this as a standard (drops dead laughing).

Revision history for this message
In , Relgoshan (relgoshan) wrote :

I use this feature frequently in Opera, because my PCs all have different OSes.

Revision history for this message
In , Tomer Cohen (tomer-gmx) wrote :

I've recently read on Planet Mozilla that Fennec will imply a "Save as PDF" feature for the next release, in order to make saving websites easy on mobile platforms. Since Firefox and Fennec share some amount of code, it might be possible to re-prioritize this issue in order to make it a better alternative for "Save as PDF", as MHTML is more open format than PDF.

http://madhava.com/egotism/archive/005045.html - Since it is impossible to comment on this post, it would be nice if someone can contact him and notifying on this RFE.

Revision history for this message
In , Relgoshan (relgoshan) wrote :

Huh. Looks like Fennec won't be much of a threat for now, then. Perhaps if it saved as PDF and then emailed it, we may have a killer feature. His screenshot also exposes the lingering "unknown size" bug.

So Fennec will be able to save files as a type it can't even read? Sounds counter-intuitive. MHT is not perfect, but wider adoption will force the standard to make some improvements of its own.

Changed in firefox:
importance: Unknown → Wishlist
Revision history for this message
In , Mar-castelluccio (mar-castelluccio) wrote :

The UnMHT extension does this work, can we integrate it into Firefox?

Revision history for this message
In , Moz-jeka (moz-jeka) wrote :

Provide a patch, write tests, ask for review, address review comments, let it land, done.

Revision history for this message
In , Arho-huttunen (arho-huttunen) wrote :

Before someone wastes their time I actually tried to implement this back in 2008 or 2009 and ran into unexpected problems. This task isn't as trivial as it at first seems. Let's just say that you can't just take UnMHT or Thunderbird and make it work in Firefox.

Revision history for this message
In , Andre Klapper (a9016009) wrote :

*** Bug 603476 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

DirectuX (cacquarante)
summary: - MHTML Format - Web Archive Files - not supported in Firefox
+ MHTML Format - Web Archive Files - Standard not supported in Firefox
Revision history for this message
In , Tomer-moz-bugs (tomer-moz-bugs) wrote :

I've found that Chromium does have MHTML support[1], although it is still marked as experimental and require manual toggling in its configuration page. Supporting MHTML would allow us to easily make desktop HTML5 portable applications, and I think it would be more useful to our users and more reflecting our mission to support the web, than, for example, building our own built in PDF viewer.

[1] https://codereview.chromium.org/7064044/ - They also have bunch of resolved and unresolved issues on https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list?can=1&q=MHTML

Revision history for this message
In , Sylvhem (sylvhem) wrote :

I think this is a very useful feature. When you save a webpage with a view to read it outline or later, it is more convenient to have a single file.

(In reply to Lance Baker from comment #87)
> MHTML is not an approved standard. It is a Microsoft idea that other browser
> developers have followed.
Among the authors of the RFC2557, only one works for Microsoft. Moreover, it is not like if MHTML is a closed file format: the specification is public and part of IETF's work.

Revision history for this message
In , Julian-reschke (julian-reschke) wrote :

(In reply to Lance Baker from comment #87)
> MHTML is not an approved standard. It is a Microsoft idea that other browser
> developers have followed. Whether Firefox follows the trend or not is a
> choice. If they don't, it is not a bug. We already have Zip to archive web
> pages and related objects. Using an add-on to do the archive from within
> Firefox is a convenience not a bug fix.

It's a specification approved as "proposed standard" by the IETF. Just like many other things the internet runs on.

Revision history for this message
In , Kevin Brosnan (kbrosnan) wrote :

*** Bug 1028603 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Revision history for this message
In , Andrea Faulds (ajf.me) wrote :

It's a shame that after 18 years, Mozilla still has no support for MIME HTML. If I knew C++ and the codebase, I'd write a patch, but alas.

I hope this comment might remind someone this exists and spur them into action.

Revision history for this message
In , Lapsap7+mz (lapsap7+mz) wrote :

(In reply to ajf from comment #101)
> It's a shame that after 18 years, Mozilla still has no support for MIME
> HTML. If I knew C++ and the codebase, I'd write a patch, but alas.

There is actually an alternative solution and we don't need to know C++. It was suggested in comment #78 and confirmed in comment #93: use the add-on called UnMHT (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unmht/) I also can confirm it's working good. I'm pretty sure it can be integrated inside Firefox setup so that it's enabled by default. Look, Calendar project used to be an add-on for Thunderbird. Now in TB 38, the add-on is integrated and works perfectly. So why not UnMHT?

I've seen comment #95 saying that it does not work for him. Maybe the commentator didn't use the right method? We cannot put the xpi file like that inside "extension" folder. In all cases, the file name has to be changed. In some cases, it's also necessary to unpack the file. For UnMHT, filename change is enough. Here are the steps for FF 40:
1. Download unmht-8.0.0-an+sm+tb+fx.xpi from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unmht/
2. Change the name to {f759ca51-3a91-4dd1-ae78-9db5eee9ebf0}.xpi
3. Put it into "extension" folder. There are two extension folders in Windows:
  a. System-wide:
     Put it in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\browser\extensions" and whoever logs in the computer will get the add-on.
  b. User-wide:
     Put it in C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\extensions so that only <user> will get it
4. In either case, it's still necessary to explicitly enable the add-on.

Revision history for this message
In , Eyalroz (eyalroz) wrote :

(In reply to 石庭豐 (Seak, Teng-Fong) from comment #102)
Teng-Fong, I believe you're mistaken. The core issue with MIME support is that it's based on code which is essentially a custom object system implemented in C, with polymorphic construction by class name, and other strangeness. It is very tricky to work with, and what's _really_ necessary is getting rid of it in favor of a proper C++'ish MIME library. Problem is, it's like a house of cards which collapses on top of you when you do that. Last decade I had tried to initiate this kind of a rewrite, but it didn't work out. See also Arho's comment #95.

Anyway, something like UnMHT are not really a solution, it's a workaround; and it would not be reasonable to integrate it. It would be yet another layer over the problematic core.

Changed in firefox (Ubuntu):
status: New → Triaged
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
no longer affects: firefox-3.0 (Ubuntu)
no longer affects: firefox-3.5 (Ubuntu)
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In , Mardeg-5 (mardeg-5) wrote :

Patrick, could you please provide a link to the source of, or just state/quote the reasoning behind, the decision to resolve this as WONTFIX?

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In , Patrick McManus (mcmanus-ducksong) wrote :

This isn't on anyone's roadmap and nobody has provided a patch for it in 15 years - so its just clogging up bugzilla. That doesn't mean it isn't a good idea - it just means nobody is planning on working on it. If someone works on it then this should be opened as a new issue.

Changed in firefox:
status: Confirmed → Won't Fix
Revision history for this message
In , Andrea Faulds (ajf.me) wrote :

But marking it as WONTFIX means that there's been a conscious decision made not to implement it, right? Here it's just a case that nobody's done it. It might be done someday.

Revision history for this message
In , Ondra Žižka (zizka) wrote :

How will someone looking for things to work on find this request?

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In , longsonr (longsonr) wrote :

*** Bug 1336793 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Revision history for this message
In , danny0838 (danny0838) wrote :

RFC 2557 MHTML is a standarized format for web page archive that deemed to be directly readable for web browsers and is already supported by many browsers such as IE and Chrome.

However, Firefox does not directly support it. Although we currently have addons like MAF (https://addons.mozilla.org/zh-tw/firefox/addon/mozilla-archive-format/) or UnMHT (https://addons.mozilla.org/zh-tw/firefox/addon/unmht/), they are written in XUL/XPCOM, which is going to be deprecated, and their functionality is currently not available in WebExtension, the exclusively addon system in the future.

Therefore, we need a support for RFC 2557 MHTML support, at least a directly reading, and saving at best. This could either be:
1. Directly support for MHTML reading and writing
2. Add enough API to allow an addon like MAF or UnMHT in WebExtension

Revision history for this message
In , Stevenwdv (stevenwdv) wrote :

Now that UmMHT etc. do not work anymore the only add-on supporting mht is Save Page WE, but it only has support for saving pages as mht, not for opening them.

Changed in firefox:
importance: Wishlist → Medium
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