6 ms·

Internet Archive: What’s new with v2

117 points by castell 11y ago

kimmel 11y ago
I like the new look. I have been trying it out for the last week doing searches and reading books. It feels cleaner than the old layout.
anc84 11y ago
> We have a lot of long-time users of the site, and we know that any major changes will cause them to have to relearn where things are and how to accomplish the things they already know how to do on v1. This kind of major change can be very annoying, so we’re working hard to make sure you only need to relearn things once. Criticism by long-term members is not purely a matter of confusion. I highly dislike the change from a "tabular" and highly text-based design to the image centric infinite-scroll one we got now. Showing cover images of random unknown music makes no sense in my opinion, there is nothing to recognise and music does not show in images. The information density has been drastically reduced. Things are reduced to icons and everywhere there are transitions. If archive.org is trying to change its audience (and contributors) then it might be a step into the right direction, but for me, the new design is a step in the wrong one. There definitely are discovery problems but I don't see how the new design helps. It reminds me more of a random modern 10 second attention span site than a well thought out interface to a vast archive.
- gavinpc 11y ago
  I stumbled onto the new design about a month ago. I had mixed reactions to it, one side of which was like yours: "Oh no, they're going to ruin it." But then I found these amazing treasures that were so much better than what I was looking for [0]. The Internet Archive is so priceless, so special, and so impossibly good, that I have to trust the people who make it. As long as they are "focused on how the site looks," there is nothing they could do to ruin it. Yes, the changes are pointless for someone who was already happy with it. But if they are able to bring more attention and support this way, then more power to them. Their #1 job is to keep it alive, and I'm sure this is motivated with that in mind. And after all, they have an API. [0] https://archive.org/stream/playseditedannot03shakuoft#page/176/mode/2up https://archive.org/stream/playseditedannot03shakuoft#page/1...
  - anc84 11y ago
    As someone who likes to share data sets via IA, their hiding of the plain list of originally uploaded files behind a non-colored link that only gets highlighted on mouse over made me furious many times. I don't want to have to combine a simple "download my data there" with "then move the mouse there and see how it is actually a link and oh by the way the actual files I meant to link you to are available if you click that". I totally understand their motivation and I think it is great to present the potentially popular parts of the archives to the public in an "experience". But it worsened my user experience and motivation as a contributor(!).
- ubercode5 11y ago
  I'm not sure where specifically you are referring to, but you can click on the "list view" under collections to remove the pictures and make it textual.
  - anc84 11y ago
    And that table view is a great addition! But still, everything focuses on graphics by default. I meant things like https://archive.org/details/texts https://archive.org/details/texts where random, weird icons are displayed that say very few things about their collections while using up quite a lot of space and visual attention.
- bane 11y ago
  I really feel like the new design does a much better job for random browsing and discovery. I've come across stuff I never would have otherwise just scrolling around. I think it does a bit better if you know the exact name of what you're looking for. I get a much better idea of how many duplicates or variants of an item are in the collection now. However, I think it does a much worse job navigating to finding things you already know are there, but maybe don't quite know the name of. It's almost impossible to navigate to something if you just have partial knowledge of it, or generally know where it is in the archive but don't have specifics. I find this super frustrating. I love archive.org more than just about anything else on the internet, and I'm willing to be patient with the new design as they flesh out the ideas. If they can fix the navigation issue I'd be relatively happy. I think what archive.org needs more than this redesign is an organizational meta-layer on-top of the archive where volunteer "curators" can organize content spread all over the archive (or siloed under some random collection somewhere) into more familiar, library-like organizational structure. For example, I like old computing magazines. However, archive.org doesn't have a "magazines" top-level hierarchy. If you search for "magazines" over on the right side-bar there's a "Magazine Rack" Collection, but it's not prominently places. And then the layer under that is a mishmash of "Collections" that include magazine genres, individual titles, etc. but no clear "computer magazine" collection. I poked around for a few minutes and still didn't find the collection for old computing magazines. So I did another search for "computer magazines" and finally there's a collection of "Computer Magazine Archives". However, this is probably incomplete, there's bound to be other magazines that are not part of this collection. It'd be much easier if I could go Texts/Magazines/Computers and everything would be there by title, maybe set a filter for "English" or something and be off reading But right now it's takes a dozen navigation clicks and a few searches to find the same, once you find a collection you end up bookmarking it in your browser because you'll probably forget the magic combination of searches and clicks that got you here. It's tough though, they're doing an immense job with relatively few resources to organize everything. So I can live with some of the disorganization. It's still an amazing treasure trove.
rwmj 11y ago
No search of historical pages still.
- textfiles 11y ago
  That turns out to be a huge, huge technical issue but I can't imagine a future in which that doesn't happen.
bontoJR 11y ago
Just tried 3-4 sites with no luck, alls giving back: "Got an HTTP 302 response at crawl time" Anyway, the new design is very nice!
- sp332 11y ago
  I thought it would cache 302's and redirect you to the archived version of the next page (if available).
sparaker 11y ago
I really liked using archive.org back in the days when it was actively indexing pages. I am happy to see the people behind it our working to improve the user experience. Its a great idea one that goes unrecognized.
- gtk40 11y ago
  Does it no longer index?
- sp332 11y ago
  It does still index pages. You can see the results of the web crawler coming in here: https://archive.org/details/webwidecrawl?sort=-publicdate https://archive.org/details/webwidecrawl?sort=-publicdate
jmhuret 11y ago
I will use the new archive.org to see what the previous version of archive.org looked like :)
wotie5 11y ago
I used to find the Internet Archive incredibly useful, sadly the new design has completely ruined this. Before the site was nice and organized, now it's a big mess that seems to be designed for smartphones. Infinite scrolling really helps making the site completely chaotic and confusing. However, even though the site is ruined for me now, I really want to thank Internet Archive for all the years of enjoyment it has given me.
- awalGarg 11y ago
  Why when any service tries to make the user experience and looks better, people try to tell them that the changes are bad? > now it's a big mess ... for smartphones This would have been very much appreciated if you pointed out specific things in the new design which you don't like. In-fact, as a developer, I even think that styling the website from dev-tools to make it look (almost) like you want is a very good idea and helpful to the site developers. It can be a good way to "thank", since you "really want to thank".
- textfiles 11y ago
  Hi, it's Jason Scott. I work for the Internet Archive but I don't speak for them, in this case. So, first I'd like to make clear that none of the underlying collections or data has moved anywhere. That is, all the items that are in a collection of, say, newspapers or music performances are still there - the URLs are precisely the same and were designed to be permanent. Nobody's shifting those around here. Google searches work, and the site search works the same, using the same criteria. Next, in the results pages, which include those "tiles" and infinite scrolling that is not to you taste, if you look in the upper right (next to the "Results" number), there's an icon that changes from tile mode to "list" mode. You can also turn on "details". That makes things into a list form, at least. However, for the moment, infinite scroll will still be engaged. Also note you can sort the list alphabetically, by creator, or by views. After doing those two steps, is the problem at that point JUST the infinite scroll? Is that what makes it a mess for you? Or is it a different set of issues? I'm happy to hear it in this thread, but also, if you click the "beta" button in the upper right, and write exactly what you'd like, I guarantee it's read.
  - 11y ago
TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
I don't like it, at all. I have yet to find an example of infinite scrolling being good, and this is no exception. And it's gone from being text-heavy to image-heavy. If it's trying to become instagram, well, good for them I guess. But that's not anything I'm interested in. At least have a theme option to keep using the old interface. I suppose I'll have to wait until someone comes out with a usable interface using the API, I suppose.
textfiles 11y ago
Just to throw additional information into the mix: * The design was the first major overhaul of the back and front ends of the site in roughly 15 years. * Introduced to the public in a very light was in October 31st, thousands of modifications/fixes have happened since then. * The V2 interface truly hit major audiences around the beginning of January. So it's been roughly 4 months, in which feedback has been huge, and read. * If you visit the changelog, https://archive.org/CHANGELOG.txt https://archive.org/CHANGELOG.txt - you can see the mass of changes that are occurring, nearly daily. * The site is nowhere near done.
- mlinksva 11y ago
  Are there public source repositories such that one can see the mass of actual changes occurring? Last time I looked I couldn't find anything corresponding among https://github.com/internetarchive https://github.com/internetarchive
themoonbus 11y ago
... why did I not know that this existed until this moment: https://archive.org/details/internetarcade&tab=collection https://archive.org/details/internetarcade&tab=collection
- sp332 11y ago
  The collection of games has been there for a while (and I suppose it grows over time), but the ability to play them in a browser is only a few months old. In fact they're actively looking for more developers to improve the speed. It's that time again.... I'm looking for a willing volunteer coder (C++ with some Javascript) awareness who wants to take a shot at JSMESS. We have a strong theory that someone could look at the code and, essentially, fix the speed problem (which would likely fix the sound). Are you out there, coding hero? https://twitter.com/textfiles https://twitter.com/textfiles
themoonbus 11y ago
Overall, I enjoy the redesign, but one criticism... having the secondary nav open above the primary nav bar is very strange. Any reason for this decision?

117 points by castell 11y ago

I like the new look. I have been trying it out for the last week doing searches and reading books. It feels cleaner than the old layout.

anc84 11y ago

> We have a lot of long-time users of the site, and we know that any major changes will cause them to have to relearn where things are and how to accomplish the things they already know how to do on v1. This kind of major change can be very annoying, so we’re working hard to make sure you only need to relearn things once. Criticism by long-term members is not purely a matter of confusion. I highly dislike the change from a "tabular" and highly text-based design to the image centric infinite-scroll one we got now. Showing cover images of random unknown music makes no sense in my opinion, there is nothing to recognise and music does not show in images. The information density has been drastically reduced. Things are reduced to icons and everywhere there are transitions. If archive.org is trying to change its audience (and contributors) then it might be a step into the right direction, but for me, the new design is a step in the wrong one. There definitely are discovery problems but I don't see how the new design helps. It reminds me more of a random modern 10 second attention span site than a well thought out interface to a vast archive.

gavinpc 11y ago
I stumbled onto the new design about a month ago. I had mixed reactions to it, one side of which was like yours: "Oh no, they're going to ruin it." But then I found these amazing treasures that were so much better than what I was looking for [0]. The Internet Archive is so priceless, so special, and so impossibly good, that I have to trust the people who make it. As long as they are "focused on how the site looks," there is nothing they could do to ruin it. Yes, the changes are pointless for someone who was already happy with it. But if they are able to bring more attention and support this way, then more power to them. Their #1 job is to keep it alive, and I'm sure this is motivated with that in mind. And after all, they have an API. [0] https://archive.org/stream/playseditedannot03shakuoft#page/176/mode/2up https://archive.org/stream/playseditedannot03shakuoft#page/1...
- anc84 11y ago
  As someone who likes to share data sets via IA, their hiding of the plain list of originally uploaded files behind a non-colored link that only gets highlighted on mouse over made me furious many times. I don't want to have to combine a simple "download my data there" with "then move the mouse there and see how it is actually a link and oh by the way the actual files I meant to link you to are available if you click that". I totally understand their motivation and I think it is great to present the potentially popular parts of the archives to the public in an "experience". But it worsened my user experience and motivation as a contributor(!).
ubercode5 11y ago
I'm not sure where specifically you are referring to, but you can click on the "list view" under collections to remove the pictures and make it textual.
- anc84 11y ago
  And that table view is a great addition! But still, everything focuses on graphics by default. I meant things like https://archive.org/details/texts https://archive.org/details/texts where random, weird icons are displayed that say very few things about their collections while using up quite a lot of space and visual attention.
bane 11y ago
I really feel like the new design does a much better job for random browsing and discovery. I've come across stuff I never would have otherwise just scrolling around. I think it does a bit better if you know the exact name of what you're looking for. I get a much better idea of how many duplicates or variants of an item are in the collection now. However, I think it does a much worse job navigating to finding things you already know are there, but maybe don't quite know the name of. It's almost impossible to navigate to something if you just have partial knowledge of it, or generally know where it is in the archive but don't have specifics. I find this super frustrating. I love archive.org more than just about anything else on the internet, and I'm willing to be patient with the new design as they flesh out the ideas. If they can fix the navigation issue I'd be relatively happy. I think what archive.org needs more than this redesign is an organizational meta-layer on-top of the archive where volunteer "curators" can organize content spread all over the archive (or siloed under some random collection somewhere) into more familiar, library-like organizational structure. For example, I like old computing magazines. However, archive.org doesn't have a "magazines" top-level hierarchy. If you search for "magazines" over on the right side-bar there's a "Magazine Rack" Collection, but it's not prominently places. And then the layer under that is a mishmash of "Collections" that include magazine genres, individual titles, etc. but no clear "computer magazine" collection. I poked around for a few minutes and still didn't find the collection for old computing magazines. So I did another search for "computer magazines" and finally there's a collection of "Computer Magazine Archives". However, this is probably incomplete, there's bound to be other magazines that are not part of this collection. It'd be much easier if I could go Texts/Magazines/Computers and everything would be there by title, maybe set a filter for "English" or something and be off reading But right now it's takes a dozen navigation clicks and a few searches to find the same, once you find a collection you end up bookmarking it in your browser because you'll probably forget the magic combination of searches and clicks that got you here. It's tough though, they're doing an immense job with relatively few resources to organize everything. So I can live with some of the disorganization. It's still an amazing treasure trove.

rwmj 11y ago

No search of historical pages still.

textfiles 11y ago
That turns out to be a huge, huge technical issue but I can't imagine a future in which that doesn't happen.

bontoJR 11y ago

Just tried 3-4 sites with no luck, alls giving back: "Got an HTTP 302 response at crawl time" Anyway, the new design is very nice!

sp332 11y ago
I thought it would cache 302's and redirect you to the archived version of the next page (if available).

sparaker 11y ago

I really liked using archive.org back in the days when it was actively indexing pages. I am happy to see the people behind it our working to improve the user experience. Its a great idea one that goes unrecognized.

gtk40 11y ago
Does it no longer index?
sp332 11y ago
It does still index pages. You can see the results of the web crawler coming in here: https://archive.org/details/webwidecrawl?sort=-publicdate https://archive.org/details/webwidecrawl?sort=-publicdate

jmhuret 11y ago

I will use the new archive.org to see what the previous version of archive.org looked like :)

wotie5 11y ago

I used to find the Internet Archive incredibly useful, sadly the new design has completely ruined this. Before the site was nice and organized, now it's a big mess that seems to be designed for smartphones. Infinite scrolling really helps making the site completely chaotic and confusing. However, even though the site is ruined for me now, I really want to thank Internet Archive for all the years of enjoyment it has given me.

awalGarg 11y ago
Why when any service tries to make the user experience and looks better, people try to tell them that the changes are bad? > now it's a big mess ... for smartphones This would have been very much appreciated if you pointed out specific things in the new design which you don't like. In-fact, as a developer, I even think that styling the website from dev-tools to make it look (almost) like you want is a very good idea and helpful to the site developers. It can be a good way to "thank", since you "really want to thank".
textfiles 11y ago
Hi, it's Jason Scott. I work for the Internet Archive but I don't speak for them, in this case. So, first I'd like to make clear that none of the underlying collections or data has moved anywhere. That is, all the items that are in a collection of, say, newspapers or music performances are still there - the URLs are precisely the same and were designed to be permanent. Nobody's shifting those around here. Google searches work, and the site search works the same, using the same criteria. Next, in the results pages, which include those "tiles" and infinite scrolling that is not to you taste, if you look in the upper right (next to the "Results" number), there's an icon that changes from tile mode to "list" mode. You can also turn on "details". That makes things into a list form, at least. However, for the moment, infinite scroll will still be engaged. Also note you can sort the list alphabetically, by creator, or by views. After doing those two steps, is the problem at that point JUST the infinite scroll? Is that what makes it a mess for you? Or is it a different set of issues? I'm happy to hear it in this thread, but also, if you click the "beta" button in the upper right, and write exactly what you'd like, I guarantee it's read.
- 11y ago

TheLoneWolfling 11y ago

I don't like it, at all. I have yet to find an example of infinite scrolling being good, and this is no exception. And it's gone from being text-heavy to image-heavy. If it's trying to become instagram, well, good for them I guess. But that's not anything I'm interested in. At least have a theme option to keep using the old interface. I suppose I'll have to wait until someone comes out with a usable interface using the API, I suppose.

textfiles 11y ago

Just to throw additional information into the mix: * The design was the first major overhaul of the back and front ends of the site in roughly 15 years. * Introduced to the public in a very light was in October 31st, thousands of modifications/fixes have happened since then. * The V2 interface truly hit major audiences around the beginning of January. So it's been roughly 4 months, in which feedback has been huge, and read. * If you visit the changelog, https://archive.org/CHANGELOG.txt https://archive.org/CHANGELOG.txt - you can see the mass of changes that are occurring, nearly daily. * The site is nowhere near done.

mlinksva 11y ago
Are there public source repositories such that one can see the mass of actual changes occurring? Last time I looked I couldn't find anything corresponding among https://github.com/internetarchive https://github.com/internetarchive

themoonbus 11y ago

... why did I not know that this existed until this moment: https://archive.org/details/internetarcade&tab=collection https://archive.org/details/internetarcade&tab=collection

sp332 11y ago
The collection of games has been there for a while (and I suppose it grows over time), but the ability to play them in a browser is only a few months old. In fact they're actively looking for more developers to improve the speed. It's that time again.... I'm looking for a willing volunteer coder (C++ with some Javascript) awareness who wants to take a shot at JSMESS. We have a strong theory that someone could look at the code and, essentially, fix the speed problem (which would likely fix the sound). Are you out there, coding hero? https://twitter.com/textfiles https://twitter.com/textfiles

themoonbus 11y ago

Overall, I enjoy the redesign, but one criticism... having the secondary nav open above the primary nav bar is very strange. Any reason for this decision?