Ask HN: What are you converting your MAFF files to?

2 points

9 years ago

My understanding is that while the MAFF specification is not deprecated, the third-party extension that implemented access to it is deprecated in Firefox Quantum. This is not a popular decision among users [1], who are blaming Mozilla for the extension developer's decision. Not sure the technical reasons that lay behind the developer not porting the extension to Quantum. Also not sure why Mozilla came up with the format, but doesn't natively support saving and opening files of that format within Firefox.

I converted to the more generic "file-and-folder" format, but the fidelity is not nearly as good as MAFF. For others who are in the same boat, I'm interested in your choice. I've considered going to WARC, as that is the standard that librarians have settled upon, but unless I'm finding the wrong resources, it basically relies upon me to set up my own Wayback Machine-like server to host the WARC files to display them. Not averse to that, especially with container tech these days, but want to find out what archival format will really last with support tooling that lasts as well.

I wish W3C would settle on a single archival format that all the browsers would adopt and interchange.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mozilla-archive-format/reviews/