I have tried this and it works pretty well. One thing you didn't mention is that because, as you said, it uses service workers, the server running kiwix-serve must support SSL. Otherwise kiwix-serve will not be able to serve up any zims produced by zimit. This is unfortunate as offline ssl certificates need to be self signed and that will cause browsers to complain.

On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 7:00 AM <offline-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:

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Today's Topics:

   1. New tool : Zimit (Stephane Coillet-Matillon)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2020 11:25:43 +0100
From: Stephane Coillet-Matillon <stephane@kiwix.org>
To: Using Wikimedia projects and MediaWiki offline
        <offline-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Offline-l] New tool : Zimit
Message-ID: <B78F3C15-8EDE-4A11-B887-BBE1682596F3@kiwix.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Hola,

Since I’m bearded and moderately overweight let me be the one to bring the first present for the holiday season and introduce Zimit, a pretty cool new tool that allows people to produce their own Zim files. Yes, you read that correctly.

* If you are the type that cannot wait to unwrap presents, you will find it at https://youzim.it <https://www.youzim.it/>

* For everyone else:
The interface is pretty minimalist, and that’s part of the message:
1. Insert target URL
2. Insert email address so we can tell you when your zim is ready
3. Download zim file

There is a limit at 1,000 items for each zim because (a) we don’t want to DDoS unsuspecting websites with requests; and (ii) also would not be able to afford the bill If it becomes as popular as we think it will be (we need to find an acceptable business model and pricing structure: any advice welcome). But since this is free software, you can obviously cut the middleman by copying, studying, modifying and redistributing the code that can be found here: https://github.com/openzim/zimit <https://github.com/openzim/zimit>

Because this relies on newly-implemented service workers, these new zim files will only work on Kiwix-android and Kiwix-serve at the moment, but this will obviously expand to other platforms in 2021.

This project was entirely funded by a Mozilla Open Source Support Award, thanks to them!

Cheers,
Stephane
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