What is the goal of SingleFileZ compared to SingleFile?

[user0022]

Hello! Excuse-me stupid question maybe!!

Well I am an average user, not very talented but with a little technical interest in computing as I use Linux and have learned some bases of html and css (very few but well...), which not everybody does.
Despite of it, I use the SingleFileZ addon and am pleased with it, but I am not sure at all of the goal of the zip transformation. What I see is that it takes less place on the disk, so as I like this feature I use SFZ. But is it made for something else? Security? Easier upload somewhere else? Reliability? Easier working on the file with some software?...
The comment by Vik in https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/singlefilez/reviews/?src=search saying "to save space" seems to indicate that the space is the advantage.

Maybe if it is the case, some users like me or with yet less knowledge, could happen to come accross the SingleFileZ addon page, and not install it, but if they had understood that it saves space on their disk, they would have. So maybe (suggestion) it could be a good thing to explain this interest of the addon compared to SingleFile, as it is just said that the page is zipped, and maybe not everybody knows what is the result of "zipping"...

[gildas-lormeau]

The 2 extensions are separated mostly for practical reasons. When I "discovered" that an extension like SingleFile could produce HTML/ZIP files, I was tempted to add this feature in SingleFile itself, as an option. However, I quickly noticed it was a bit risky because the changes to apply in the code to support the legacy format and this new format would have been too large. So, I decided to fork SingleFile in order to deliver faster this feature without taking too much risks.

I think the zip format offers 2 advantages:

• files are smaller
• files can be unzipped in order to extract resources like images or fonts more easily

I wished I could implement the encryption to protect pages with a password but the last time I tried, I was not able to produce valid zip files. I guess this would give another advantage.

Note that SingleFileZ appears in the comparison table here: https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile#singlefilez and the first question in the FAQ also explains the pros and cons: https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFileZ/blob/master/faq.md.

[user0022]

Thank you for clear answer!

Nevertheless I still tell myself that maybe the advantage of page size reducing could me more explicitly indicated, as one can also imagine someone looking for this feature typing e. g. "reduce size" or "save space" or "smaller" or "lighten" in the Firefox addon search engine (or even in "a big general search engine"), which won't lead to this addon. But not thinking about typing "zip" which seems the only word in the page indicating this feature. (Previously there were tags in Firefox addon pages that could be used for this but it doesn't exist anymore.)

I should have clicked on the links that are in the addon page, the day I installed it! But too much in a hurry. It would have avoided an useless question but well it gave me also the opportunity to give my opinion about the other thing which is maybe not very useful too but well to me it seems to make sense. Now I watched them and it's instructive and answers my question yes.

[lumnikemel]

Do you plan to add the annotation features in SingleFile to SingleFileZ?

[gildas-lormeau]

Sorry, I forgot to answer to your question. Yes, I would like the add the annotation editor in SingleFileZ too.

[nomatica]

Just wanted to say that both these extensions rock! Thank you for making them

[gildas-lormeau]

For the record, SingleFileZ has been merged into SingleFile.

[user0022]

Thank you for the information! (recieved by mail). I still used SFZ waiting for the merging you had talked about, but as I had uninstalled SF I didn't know you had already done it. So now I just reinstalled SF and will uninstall SFZ.

[gildas-lormeau]

You're welcome! Don't forget to select the option "File format > format > self-extracting ZIP (universal)" in SingleFile.