Why MHTML not browsed by chrome/Firefox but with IE?

Question

Here does Internet Explorer beat Chrome & Firefox if am not wrong? I Save a webpage in mobile using OperaMini browser and it stored that as .mhtml file.

After I tried to open that file on my desktop by Chrome and Firefox but when i double-clicked on .mhtml Chrome & Firefox downloaded that file instead of rendering the .mhtml file.

Finally with I opened IE and surprisingly IE successfully browsed mhtml file.

Initially I thought .mhtml is MobileHTML but it is MIMEHTML. have read MHTML . Still I have some questions in my mind which are:

1. When MHTML is invented
2. Why Chrome/Firefox not support MHTML by default but IE does
3. How CSS/JS are stored as there is only one file ie MHTML

Your response will be greatly appreciated!!

Answer 1

The purpose of MHTML is to combine all elements of a web page in one file. It was originally proposed in 1999. More info here. This might seem like a good idea, but it has not been adopted by many browsers for reasons I can only speculate, but have a good gut feeling on.

Basically it comes down to what is HTML and linking to external components versus having them all in one file. It might seem more convent to have it all in one file, but imagine that file is 1MB in size. That would mean the content would not render until the whole MHTML file is downloaded. Which is very bad. Who wants to wait for content to load? In contrast HTML (and XHTMNL) work better since they convey the basic structure of a page right away when loaded. And it loads fast since it is just text. And then additional elements can be loaded after the main HTML is loaded.

So let’s say you want to read a news article in your browser. You request the web page. The bulk of the content is loaded by the HTML file. You can begin reading while the other elements load. And thus, you have a better user experience even on a slow connection.

Why does Internet Explorer implement it? Who knows. Microsoft always wants to do things differently to dominate a market. So perhaps there is some obscure way that Internet Explorer uses MHTML I am unclear on. But Microsoft generally does not care about web standards but rather just forcing their will on the world because they basically “own” the business/enterprise market.

Answer 2

1. MHTML was proposed as a standard in 1999

2. Unlike HTML, CSS and ECMAScript (Javascript), MHTML is not an agreed standard. Some browsers, like Opera and IE, have chosen to support it. Most others have third party extensions to provide support for people who want it. A few use other methods for saving complete web pages (Safari uses Apple's webarchive format).

3. Check out the original RFC for the details of how it works.

Answer 3

Firefox handles them with the unMht addon. It works also online from the web (on a link to an mhtml file) and not only on local mhtml.

This works unfortunately under the latest new verson 3.8 if Firefox but I hope this very useful addon will be updated.