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How to view Web pages without a browser
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August 27, 1998 by Sandra Gittlen |
From...
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(IDG) -- Chicago - An IETF working group has approved a standard for sending and reading Web pages without the need for a browser on the client end.
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The proposed standard, MIME HTML (MHTML), uses Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions to encapsulate HTML documents. By doing this, information linked to from a Web page such as objects and images, can be stored along with the document in the message so that a user can call up the formatted contents of the page even if he is not connected to a browser.
The standard would formalize and expand the increasingly common practice of embedding HTML into e-mail messages or attachments. Several e-mail clients, including those from Netscape, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Pegasus, already let users bring up formatted HTML documents from within an e-mail message without invoking a browser.
"MHTML allows us to deliver the same content to a message box that you would see over the Web," said working group chair Einar Stefferud.
MHTML can be used to archive dynamically changing pages, Stefferud said. For instance, a user can set a Web page documenting the weather to be encapsulated at a certain time each day. The user can then create a library of those weather page snapshots to reference later.
MHTML needs the approval of the Internet Engineering Steering Group before it can move on to the standards track.
How it works
When a user is sent a Web page using MHTML, an index of the Web page is created in the message. That index includes a list of the pieces of the Web page that need to be reconstructed. Then, when the message is transferred to a client-side user agent, the message is reconstructed based on that index using the encapsulated objects and images. This is all done transparent to the user.
"MHTML makes sure that everything you need for that page is in the bundle," Stefferud said.