Webarchive

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The webarchive file format is available on Apple's Mac platform for saving and reviewing complete web pages using the Safari browser.[1] Support for webarchive documents only exists on Macs, Safari 3 on Windows does not support the webarchive format.

Other web browsers make use of the MHTML format or do the equivalent by saving a directory of inline resources (usually images) alongside the html file being saved.[citation needed]

The webarchive format appears to be a concatenation of source files, with filenames and some unknown binary glue in between. It is not meant to be a regular standard to pass documents around, using the print to PDF feature in Safari is a far better method to store a webpage. Instead, .webarchive appears to more be a convenience for Mac developers. The API uses webarchives to simplify using cut and paste with whole or partial web pages.[citation needed]

Work-arounds to allow the file to be viewed in other browsers such as Windows Internet Explorer are possible though specific webpage contents may hinder this process.

  • Open the webarchive file using TextEdit.
  • Open the webarchive file using Word for mac 2004 and save it as a web page from Word's file menu.
  • Use the free tools WebArchive Folderizer[1] or WebArchive Extractor.[2]

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