With '.html only', that's what you get--none of the 'resources' that go
along with the page--no graphics, no .css, .js, all of the stuff that make
it appear pretty. It's one step above 'text', in that you get some
formatting, color in text where specified, tables, and some background
color, when it's specified in the html tags.
These days, most of that (fancy formatting) is done in the .css sheets, and
the 'gee whiz stuff in JavaScript. Saving as a complete web page will save
most of those resources, and IE will patch in the references so that you get
to see *most* of it (but not usually the stuff done by the JavaScript), and
saving it as an 'archive' saves it in a MIME format that allows storage of
the different resources in one file, at the cost of some space inefficiency.
The MIME files are also just a little slower to display, but mostly one
would not notice the diff.
IE tends to cough up a hairball when you try to save some pages completely
because the reformatting of the file the server sent is too involved--uses
frames in an unusual way, or too much JavaScript, but also when it decides a
security issue is on hand. In those cases, unless you want to go to a lot
of extra trouble, saving as '.html only' will often suffice. If not, it
depends on how deeply you want to dig into it. There are some programs I've
seen on shareware sites that claim to take care of this, but I've never
tried them. Life is much too short to try everything.
hth,
Joe
