Webarchive

This article is about webarchive file format. For web archiving, see web archiving.

The webarchive file format is available on Mac OS X and Windows for saving and reviewing complete web pages using the Safari browser. Support for webarchive documents was added in Safari 4 Beta on Windows and on subsequent versions.

The webarchive format is a concatenation of source files with filenames saved in the binary plist format using NSKeyedEncoder.^{[citation needed]} Although it is a platform-independent format, many people prefer to use Safari's print-to-PDF feature instead to store webpages.^{[citation needed]} Indeed, the webarchive format appears to be more a convenience for Mac developers. The API uses webarchives to simplify using cutting-and-pasting with whole or partial web pages.^{[citation needed]}

A version of the webarchive format is used to bundle whole music albums and movies with extra content and menus inside iTunes LP and Extras.

Converting for other browsers

Workarounds to allow the file to be viewed in other browsers are possible, though specific webpage contents may hinder this process:

• Open the webarchive file using Microsoft Word, and save it as a web page from Word's file menu.
• Use the free tools WebArchive Folderizer (for OS X 10.2 and higher) or WebArchive Extractor (for OS X 10.4.3 and higher).

Alternatives

MAFF is an open format (with a published specification) that enables saving of whole webpages in a single file. It is currently supported by Firefox, using an extension. Other web browsers use the MHTML format or do the equivalent by saving a directory of inline resources (usually images) alongside the html file, sometimes compressed, like the .war format used by Konqueror (tar+gzip or tar+bzip2). Safari isn't able to handle either format.