5 ms·

The new archive.org is over 8MB of HTML, quite impressive. Snark aside, i'd like to read a post about what they changed and why. For example i see they almost

The new archive.org is over 8MB of HTML, quite impressive. Snark aside, i'd like to read a post about what they changed and why. For example i see they almost entirely removed the previously prominent links to the forums. Why is that?

maaarghk 12y ago
It does say on the top right that this is a beta site, so it's probably a weeee bit early to be making comments about "the new direction" and all that.
- obviouslygreen 12y ago
  I'd say it's exactly the opposite: Early on is exactly when comments about "the new direction" can most reasonably be expected to have an effect, assuming anyone is listening/reading.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  Well beta means feature complete and considered ready to ship excepting as yet unspotted last minute bugs from testers ... so it's way too late to have input to the new direction, the new direction is at beta stage set in stone unless the update is scrapped.
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    > Well beta means feature complete and considered ready to ship excepting as yet unspotted last minute bugs from testers No, that's a release candidate. A beta is considered feature complete, but potentially not, and almost definitely somewhat buggy and/or non-performant. It's also often not undergone any major form of usability testing, and will often need to be modified to incorporate the results of that.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- nknighthb 12y ago
  On top of what the others said, it requires pointing out that you go to www.archive.org and get the new page. It's shipped. It is the public face now. You don't get to hide behind any sort of pre-release label when you've already made it the default in place of a prior working model.
  - textfiles 12y ago
    If you go to the site cold, you do not get the new site. You get the old site. If, however, you've chosen to look at the new site, a cookie is set so you are looking at the new site. If you click on "exit beta" in the corner, it will go back to the old site and the old site after that. So it's still an option.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      Please, please, pretty please keep the old site around in some form. It would be the irony of ironies if the archive would no longer be available in its old form.
    - nknighthb 12y ago
      OK, well, that's... Actually worse. Websites should not make changes to a user's settings based simply on a GET against an URL, because the user can click the URL from a random stranger not knowing it would have that effect -- as I did. Aside from being a poor user experience, what has happened here is someone has deliberately coded a security vulnerability. Granted the impact here is basically trivial, but it's still a pretty classic no-no, and should have immediately set off flashing lights and klaxons in any security-conscious developer's mind.
      - textfiles 12y ago
        I think the dev team would be surprised to hear that getting to see the new site is a security vulnerability!
        nknighthb 12y ago
aselzer 12y ago
Wow, this is due to them including more than 50 or so base64 encoded inline images. They should really change this. The page took more than 8s to load (with cached images).
- Mahn 12y ago
  Huh. Why would anyone think that was a good idea.
  - snsr 12y ago
    It results in fewer HTTP requests.
    - nknighthb 12y ago
      It also results in a 33% byte overhead on top of the additional CPU and memory usage involved in actually pulling out and decoding base64 on the client side, and it screws up caching. What should be a quick reload of this page results in the transfer of that 8MB all over again, and takes very nearly as long as the original load. There is no universe in which this was wise.
      - snsr 12y ago
        All good points; I wasn't advocating, just observing :)
Turing_Machine 12y ago
Jiminy Christmas, that's slow. Disclaimer: I'm on an unreliable hotel internet connection. On the other hand, most of the world is on bad internet connections all the time. Loading the images on mouseover (or whatever) would avoid having to wait for that massive slug of data. I sure don't want to be loading that much data every time I go to the site, especially not on expensive mobile bandwidth, and especially since (as others noted) the images appear to be uncacheable. So: nice job on the look, not so great on the bandwidth. :-)

maaarghk 12y ago

It does say on the top right that this is a beta site, so it's probably a weeee bit early to be making comments about "the new direction" and all that.

obviouslygreen 12y ago
I'd say it's exactly the opposite: Early on is exactly when comments about "the new direction" can most reasonably be expected to have an effect, assuming anyone is listening/reading.
pbhjpbhj 12y ago
Well beta means feature complete and considered ready to ship excepting as yet unspotted last minute bugs from testers ... so it's way too late to have input to the new direction, the new direction is at beta stage set in stone unless the update is scrapped.
- vertex-four 12y ago
  > Well beta means feature complete and considered ready to ship excepting as yet unspotted last minute bugs from testers No, that's a release candidate. A beta is considered feature complete, but potentially not, and almost definitely somewhat buggy and/or non-performant. It's also often not undergone any major form of usability testing, and will often need to be modified to incorporate the results of that.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
nknighthb 12y ago
On top of what the others said, it requires pointing out that you go to www.archive.org and get the new page. It's shipped. It is the public face now. You don't get to hide behind any sort of pre-release label when you've already made it the default in place of a prior working model.
- textfiles 12y ago
  If you go to the site cold, you do not get the new site. You get the old site. If, however, you've chosen to look at the new site, a cookie is set so you are looking at the new site. If you click on "exit beta" in the corner, it will go back to the old site and the old site after that. So it's still an option.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Please, please, pretty please keep the old site around in some form. It would be the irony of ironies if the archive would no longer be available in its old form.
  - nknighthb 12y ago
    OK, well, that's... Actually worse. Websites should not make changes to a user's settings based simply on a GET against an URL, because the user can click the URL from a random stranger not knowing it would have that effect -- as I did. Aside from being a poor user experience, what has happened here is someone has deliberately coded a security vulnerability. Granted the impact here is basically trivial, but it's still a pretty classic no-no, and should have immediately set off flashing lights and klaxons in any security-conscious developer's mind.
    - textfiles 12y ago
      I think the dev team would be surprised to hear that getting to see the new site is a security vulnerability!
      - nknighthb 12y ago

aselzer 12y ago

Wow, this is due to them including more than 50 or so base64 encoded inline images. They should really change this. The page took more than 8s to load (with cached images).

Mahn 12y ago
Huh. Why would anyone think that was a good idea.
- snsr 12y ago
  It results in fewer HTTP requests.
  - nknighthb 12y ago
    It also results in a 33% byte overhead on top of the additional CPU and memory usage involved in actually pulling out and decoding base64 on the client side, and it screws up caching. What should be a quick reload of this page results in the transfer of that 8MB all over again, and takes very nearly as long as the original load. There is no universe in which this was wise.
    - snsr 12y ago
      All good points; I wasn't advocating, just observing :)

Turing_Machine 12y ago

Jiminy Christmas, that's slow. Disclaimer: I'm on an unreliable hotel internet connection. On the other hand, most of the world is on bad internet connections all the time. Loading the images on mouseover (or whatever) would avoid having to wait for that massive slug of data. I sure don't want to be loading that much data every time I go to the site, especially not on expensive mobile bandwidth, and especially since (as others noted) the images appear to be uncacheable. So: nice job on the look, not so great on the bandwidth. :-)