MHT files (MAF format)

I grew to like MHT files a while back. Basically, you can save a self-contained web page in a single file. This has huge organizational advantages over the typical 'save complete' option where you get the html in one place and a subdirectory full of images. Besides being awkwardly names usually, it's just too annoying to archive many of these sets, but MHT solves at that by embedding all the text and images in a single place. It's a step up on bookmarking too because you're snapping a state to archive, so if the page moves or goes away, you've still got it. Now I've got lots of these files laying all over the place and started going back to some old MSDN pages. But Microsoft has moved things around and pieces that were linked now redirect and generally break it all and destroy my awesome plan. There was the problem that MHT is proprietary and you need IE to open and save them, but dealing with MSDN, you want to be using IE anyway. So I swallowed my pride and just used IE for this.

But now IE is following all these redirects, and I don't want it to. Opening in Word gave the same behavior. I knew I had Mozilla working once with MHT files, so I tried to hunt down the pieces. But since then, I've upgraded to FireFox 2.0. I quickly found the Mozilla Archive Format add-on, but this only works with FireFox 1.5 and won't install for 2.0 because of the max version check. Ugh. But with a little more research I found MR Tech's Local Install tool. It's designed for people developing or testing themes and add-ons and lets you do lots of cool things. The only piece I needed was to ignore the max version check when installing an add-on.

It took a couple tries to get the Local Install thing installed correctly. I don't know what went wrong at first, but anything I opened in a new tab just wouldn't load. So I uninstalled it and a couple other old add-ons, then started again. Everything seemed to be working this time, so I hit the Install Now link to the xpi file and immediately I'm presented with a nice option to turn off the delay and then another dialog with a checkbox that lets me ignore the version check. Perfect. I ignore it and it installs.

With the plugin, I simply drag one of my old MHT files into FireFox and it takes a couple seconds to load, but the content pops up in a new tab. No redirecting to other MSDN pages, so the behavior is as I expected and I can get to the (outdated) content.

Anyway, a nice little tool if you like to work with MHT.