Review: archive-webextension

Archive-webextension is a Firefox add-on for saving pages into the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. The importance of this work is commonly neglected, but the web is very volatile and ephemeral, which warrants care so that people can have access to this whole treasure trove. Backups are important, and archiving the Internet is serious business.

The add-on itself is simple, and was made mainly to replace a previous add-on that did this work, but became incompatible with newer versions of Firefox, as it is no longer maintained. It is made as a webextension, so that it can be compatible with the new directions Mozilla is taking Firefox. It works well and I can recommend it to anyone interested in helping save our shared history.

That being said, internationalization would be a welcome addition (and not too complicated either), so I’m giving it four stars. It can always improve, right?!

Disclaimer: You may find my opinion biased as I’m part of Peers, the same project that archive-webextension belongs to, and I speak to its author, zPlus, on IRC sometimes. Although really, I couldn’t find much to complain about in this add-on, and I think it fills an important role.