ArchiveWeb.page is a JavaScript based system for high-fidelity web archiving directly in the browser. The system can be used as a Chrome/Chromium based browser extension and also as an Electron app.
The system creates, stores and replays high-fidelity web archives stored directly in the browser (via IndexedDB).
For more detailed info on how to use the extension (and the app when it is available), see the: ArchiveWeb.page User Guide
The initial app release is available on the Releases page
The extension makes use of the Chrome debugging protocol to capture and save network traffic, and extends the ReplayWeb.page UI and the wabac.js service worker system for replay and storage.
The codebase for the extension and Electron app is shared, but they can be deployed in different ways.
To developer ArchiveWeb.page, Node 12+ and Yarn are needed.
The production version of the extension is published to the Chrome Web Store
For development, the extension can be installed from the wr-ext
directory as an unpacked extension.
If you want to make changes to the extension, it should be installed in this way. This will be a different version than the production version of the extension.
-
Clone this repo
-
Open the Chrome Extensions page (chrome://extensions).
-
Choose 'Load Unpacked Extension' and point to the
./wr-ext
directory in your local copy of this repo. -
Click the extension icon to show the extension popup, start recording, etc...
For development, it is recommended to use the dev build of the extension:
-
Run
yarn install
and then ``yarn run build-dev` -
Run
yarn run start-ext
-- this will ensure thewr-ext
directory is rebuilt after any changes to the source. -
After making changes, the extension still needs to be reloaded in the browser. From the Chrome extensions page, click the reload button to load the latest version.
-
Click the extension icon to show the extension popup, start recording, etc... The dev build of the extension will be grey to difrentiate from the production version.
The Electron app version is in beta and the latest release can be downloaded from the Releases page
To run the Electron app development build:
-
Clone this repo.
-
Run
yarn install
and thenyarn run build-dev
-
Run
yarn run start-electron
to start the app.
The Electron App version will open recording in a new window. It is designed to support Flash, better support for IPFS sharing. However, it is still in development and may not work yet until the initial release is out.
After making changes, rerun yarn run build-dev
and yarn run start-electron
to load the app.
To create a platform-specific binary, run:
yarn run pack
The standalone app will then be available in the ./dist/
directory.