Mozilla Archive Format

Legacy compressed Zip file format

Mozilla Archive Format

Filename extension|

.maff

Internet media type|

application/x-maff

Magic number| `04 03 4b 50`
Developed by| Christopher Ottley,[1] Paolo Amadini[1]
Initial release| 4 May 2004 (2004-05-04)
Type of format| Web-archive, data compression
Container for| Web-pages
Extended from| ZIP
Open format?| Yes for the Specification of MAFF file format;[2]
(MAF Firefox Addon)[3] under MPL 1.1, GPL 2.0, LGPL 2.1, or any later version of these licenses;
Documentation is under Copyright;[4]
Website| maf.mozdev.org/maff-file-format.html/

The Mozilla Archive Format (MAFF) is a legacy Web archive file format that was provided by Firefox through an extension,[3] used to store one or more web pages with their associated audio, video, and other related web resources to a single file.[5] Unlike MHTML, which uses MIME encoding within a single HTML file, MAFF compresses the page into a Zip container file.[6]

The extension supported versions of Firefox from 2007 to 2017 but not later, and there are no plans to update it.[7] It continued to be supported in Cyberfox and Waterfox, forks of Firefox that try to keep features removed from Firefox like the traditional extension API. Browser extension WebScrapBook (with assistant PyWebScrapBook), available for Firefox 57+ and Chromium-based browsers, supports saving and opening MAFF files.[8][9] Pale Moon extension MozArchiver, a fork of the original extension, provides the same support for Pale Moon 26.0 and newer.[10]

Existing files in the discontinued .maff format can be accessed by extracting the internal folders and files with an unarchiver such as 7-Zip. It also allows for automatic processing, e.g. as Zip-type in local search machines (like DocFetcher). Pale Moon allows .maff files to be opened in Microsoft Windows.

## Format licensing

[edit]

MAFF is an open file format. The file format specification is published.[2]

## See also

[edit]

* Data URI scheme
* Microsoft Compiled HTML Help
* MHTML
* Webarchive

## External links

[edit]

* MAF – Mozilla Archive Format, with MHT and Faithful Save at the Wayback Machine (archived 2 November 2017)
* MAF Addon Archive at the Wayback Machine (archived 1 November 2019) — direct links to the XPI files might require non-Firefox based browsers (or older Firefox based) in order to download.
* About the MAFF file format
* User Manual of Firefox Addon MAF – Mozilla Archive Format, with MHT and Faithful Save
* MAFF format as option in WebScrapBook for Firefox
* MAFF format as option in WebScrapBook for Chrome browsers (Chrome, Chromium etc.)
* SingleFileZ on GitHub

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c "MAF project members". Retrieved 9 September 2013.
2. ^ a b "The MAFF specification". Retrieved 9 September 2013.
3. ^ a b "Firefox Addon: MAF – Mozilla Archive Format". Archived from the original on 2 November 2017. Retrieved 9 September 2013.
4. ^ "User's Manual Firefox Addon: MAF – Mozilla Archive Format". Retrieved 9 September 2013.
5. ^ "About the MAFF file format". maf.mozdev.org. 2011. Retrieved 16 November 2011.
6. ^ "Mozilla Archive Format". maf.mozdev.org. 2011. Retrieved 16 November 2011.
7. ^ "Known issues with the Mozilla Archive Format add-on". Retrieved 13 August 2017.
8. ^ "WebScrapBook on GitHub". GitHub. Retrieved 11 April 2019.
9. ^ "Webscrapbook · PyPI". Retrieved 11 April 2019.
10. ^ "Pale Moon – Add-ons – MozArchiver". Retrieved 23 April 2018.