Fenix: [Meta] Save Page Offline

[bbinto]

Why/User Benefit/User Problem

As a user, I want to be able to retrieve select websites when offline, so I can revisit the content without requiring a network connection.

Feature Brief

Acceptance Criteria (how do I know when I’m done?)

• I can choose to save a website to access later when I am offline (TBD: Need to determine use cases. e.g. how much of the website and which elements should be saved)
• I can retrieve my saved pages from within the browser
• I can delete my saved offline pages

[cpeterso]

GV API to tell Gecko to enter offline browsing mode, though it doesn't save local copies of web pages:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1533271

[bbinto]

@mheubusch - I think we should move this out of MVP, thoughts?

[cpeterso]

@vesta0 - The GV team needs more details on how this Save Page Offline feature should work. Is this feature about taking a full page screenshot, saving a page's HTML and assets to a local file, or enabling Gecko's existing offline browsing mode (where Gecko will load files from the browser cache instead of from the network)?

[vesta0]

@cpeterso I've updated the description with more details. We can discuss further during the planning week.

[liuche]

We decided in Q4 planning that we would file a spike for this.

[sblatz]

@liuche did you file one for this? :)

[Oymate]

Update?

[chphmh]

I want to express my support for this feature request, because I have used this regularly in the Fennec version of Firefox for Android. After I updated to Fenix, I was sad to see that my offline reading list from the old app version had been converted to regular bookmarks.

Previously, I would switch to reading mode for longer articles and if I did not have time to read them right away, I would add a bookmark, which from the reading mode gave me an offline saved page.
I also used this feature when I was on vacation abroad when I did not have a roaming data plan: so I would save a travel website or travel guide article offline while in the hotel wifi, and later could access the offline version while outside.

I know there are some alternatives for this, but they do have disadvantages:

• "Save as pdf" is good when images are needed in the offline copy, but in many cases it is a waste of storage space as text is enough.
• Apps like Pocket are good for this, but to have an offline copy, you need to share the website from Firefox to Pocket, then open Pocket and let it load the website there again. (For some websites Firefox was even able to show reading mode & save offline when Pocket would only offer the web view, which it does not save offline as far as I know.)

[FunkyBrewster]

I'm missing the option to simply save the web page as html to a local file. Removing that, along with Save Page as PDF is a major feature loss. I open FF one day to find tons of features removed, and it makes no sense that you want to "assess how widely this feature is used before designing it." It was already designed, implemented, and functioning perfectly! FF is still better than Chromium in many ways but this last update is so incomplete it's actually a toss up over which is less worse right now.

[TheRealOsas]

I love this feature and I can't wait for it to land

[360cid]

I would also like to express my support for this feature as like @chphmh, I am a regular user of offline content. In my case, I am frequently out in the wilderness with no phone service, actively using my phone as a navigation device. I often used the print to PDF function in Fennec to save offline information on backcountry hiking and climbing routes -- things like trip reports, route descriptions, and forum threads, which I use as a reference alongside GPS while navigating off-trail. I would frequently save to PDF directly from reader mode in order to focus on the text and image content I cared about.

I realize my use case is probably more niche than most, but the Fenix update has hampered this workflow and introduced additional friction by forcing me to go back to Chrome whenever I need to save content offline. Additionally, Chrome's lack of a streamlined reader mode or thorough ad blocking support has in some cases made the usability of the offline content worse, so I definitely miss having a feature like this readily available in Firefox.

[andreicristianpetcu]

@360cid if you are interested in an ugly workaround you can take full page screenshot. like so https://mobile.twitter.com/FirefoxPreview/status/1313361259656556545

Here is how to install https://mobile.twitter.com/FirefoxPreview/status/1311796843848835072

What extension were you using to save as pdf?

[360cid]

@andreicristianpetcu I misspoke -- I was printing to PDF through the browser, not saving via an extension.

[B0pol]

Another "workaround":
You can search for a link to that page in another page, long press on the link, "download link". It will download the page as a .htm file

But

• you need to find a link to this page
• it seems not to download some images, CSS and JavaScript.
• you can't open in Firefox (Android) but you can open Chrome (Android, Desktop) and Firefox desktop

[MicroBeast]

You could open local file in Firefox. Someone mentioned about using protocol file:// somewhere around here (deep in conversations).

So, like file:///storage/emulated/0/local.ext. Notice that triple / after :.