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Poster:
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tracey pooh |
Date:
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May 20, 2015 6:54pm |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
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Re: New version of Archive.org |
hi again,
re: "A GOOD REASON WHY THE CLASSIC INTERFACE CANNOT BE RETAINED"...
I've basically been at archive.org since it began, as a lead programmer, having only left in the middle for four years.
the pages and setup for /v1 are quite nonstandard and very unlike any other place. even so, similar to a lot of other places that change, the UI/UX changes you've all seen aren't *just* markup and/or templates and stylesheets.
they depend on various services, REST APIs, search engines, databases, JSON elements, XML, flatfiles and more.
some of those are going to change because they have to, for expanding out our services and capabilities.
the "classic" look will survive some of the service/back-end changes -- but ultimately, at some point, it is "doomed", unfortunately, as needed elements and pieces migrate.
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Poster:
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garthus1 |
Date:
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May 20, 2015 10:06pm |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
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Re: New version of Archive.org |
Tracey,
These deceptively technical explanations may help explain why the new interface is being developed. But they cannot explain why the Archive cannot leave the old interface in place and let others use the experience which they prefer. We are not talking about resource constraints or cost here, I am sure the files take up little space on the Archive's servers.
Gerry
This post was modified by garthus1 on 2015-05-21 05:06:19
This post was modified by garthus1 on 2015-05-21 05:06:54
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Poster:
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Retrodude |
Date:
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Jun 22, 2015 8:46am |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
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Crossing My Fingers- the Beta format is Unusable |
I certainly hope there's a way to keep an understandable and useable format for IA, The new Beta format is, most emphatically, neither. After wiping my computer clean the other day, when I got back online and visited IA, I was dumped, dunk-tank style, into the dreaded Beta. It seems to be the the Windows 8 of formats. I guess the best way to put it (I'm not a techie in any way), is that it's far too radical a change. Absolutely nothing is findable. I can't tell whether the functions I need are removed, or simply hidden. There's no way to tell. The only way I was able to write this post is: after an epic struggle, I finally found the "get me out of here" button. This returned me to the usable format, where simple tasks like finding Community Video Forum are not impossible. I'm a huge IA fan, and appreciate all the efforts made by the staff. Nonetheless, this is not working. Help!
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Poster:
|
Jeff Kaplan |
Date:
|
Jun 22, 2015 10:39am |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
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Re: Crossing My Fingers- the Beta format is Unusable |
i can try to help. i've found that once you successfully search it's easier to understand the new search interface.
if you can give me a common type of search you do and what you hope to find i might be able to walk you through it.
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Poster:
|
garthus1 |
Date:
|
Jun 22, 2015 10:43am |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
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Re: Crossing My Fingers- the Beta format is Unusable |
Retrodude,
This is why a group of us is working on another interface which will retain the usability of the old interface.
Gerry
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Poster:
|
Claverhouse |
Date:
|
Jan 5, 2016 11:14pm |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
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Re: Crossing My Fingers- the Beta format is Unusable |
Did the better interface come to pass ? The new Flat Style makes it pretty well impossible to find anything, quite apart from being very fugly.
It would be great to be able to use the Archive again, and maybe there's a link on the internet to a decent older interface ?
Thanks. I just don't go to sites with Flat Style/Metro cos they all look indistinguishable.
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Poster:
|
garthus1 |
Date:
|
Jan 6, 2016 8:30am |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
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Re: Crossing My Fingers- the Beta format is Unusable |
Claverhouse,
We are working on it right now. It will be integrated into our Info-portal site. Just too much to work on right now. Yes I do not like the look and feel of these new styles ... it gives the impression of being lost. Just hope they leave the classic site up for a bit longer. Shoot me an email at garthus801@gmail.com and we will notify you when it is up.
Gerry
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Poster:
|
climberpop |
Date:
|
Jan 19, 2023 12:28pm |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
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Re: Crossing My Fingers- the Beta format is Unusable |
This post was modified by climberpop on 2023-01-19 20:28:26
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Poster:
|
BNRToast |
Date:
|
Jan 6, 2016 2:21pm |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
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The Beta format is now your only choice. |
Those are chilling words to many of us.
And never has a verifiable reason been given for the need to destroy the good version nor does it seem that any regular user input or admin suggestion has been adopted. It seems odd that the good and the new versions can now coexist but the good one HAS to go soon.
It is my hope that when the next big fad comes to the Archive in a couple of years it will allow user customization of the pages. I will immediately make the text visible to limited sight users. Meanwhile Garthus I know many would be happy to see things when you are ready.
Whoops, went to the new site by accident and all the forums disappeared. I guess that's next.
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Poster:
|
Jeff Kaplan |
Date:
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Jan 7, 2016 6:02am |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
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Re: The Beta format is now your only choice. |
forums are still there. there is a tab when a forum is part of af a collection. e.g.:
https://archive.org/details/texts&tab=forum
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Poster:
|
Jeff Kaplan |
Date:
|
Jan 7, 2016 6:02am |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
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Re: The Beta format is now your only choice. |
forums are still there. there is a tab when a forum is part of af a collection. e.g.:
https://archive.org/details/texts&tab=forum
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Poster:
|
BNRToast |
Date:
|
Jan 7, 2016 11:40am |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
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Re: The Beta format is now your only choice. |
Jeff,
You've been a helpful presence for years so I will type this gently. The new page you suggest is nothing like the user friendly set-up of the real Archive entrance page. I'm sure some new people have stumbled on to the fact that there are forums here and users can interact, but I know I will not be able to find that suggested page again without a bookmark.
And not to take shots but the four duplicate posting by an admin at the site indicate there is a need for more people to fix the things that are breaking instead of creating another gee-whiz thing to tap fingers on.
And if the guy who runs the place ever lands his hover-board near there, please mention the collection admin screen customization thing. If I could set my collection page up for my main user base (limited sight and shaky) it would be a help. They'd rather hear text to speech proxy logs than have more tiles magically repopulate their screen.
My unproductive complaining has taken enough of our time. Thanks for what you can do.
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Poster:
|
Jeff Kaplan |
Date:
|
Jan 7, 2016 6:02am |
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Forum:
|
texts
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Subject:
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Re: The Beta format is now your only choice. |
forums are still there. there is a tab when a forum is part of af a collection. e.g.:
https://archive.org/details/texts&tab=forum
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Poster:
|
Dupenhagen Moonbat |
Date:
|
May 16, 2016 3:00pm |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
|
The Ampersand Must Be Escaped |
The HTML anchor tag (see
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_a.asp) must be provided and the ampersand must be escaped with & -- (see
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_entities.asp) in order to display the URL correctly:
https://archive.org/details/texts&tab=forum .
To see how to wrangle the ampersand in the wild, right-click on this very Forums page, select "View page source," then Ctrl-F the string "Dupenhagen Moonbat on 2016-05-16" and it'll show you exactly how to lasso that (ampersand) animal so it doesn't make a mess of your HTML-clad posts:
'Bat out.
P.S. The poster (Yours Truly) sincerely hopes the "view-source" screenshot displays as a flyin' fuggin' mess on your mobile. Look up from your "device," smell a rose, smile at someone (in person, not by "emoji)," hug your kid, then take her or his mobile (a thing which should hang harmlessly above their head over the crib, not grind away at their DNA with ionizing radiation) away, and give them a break from the damage your "gift" to them is doing to their geometrically multiplying cells.
This post was modified by Dupenhagen Moonbat on 2016-05-16 22:00:19
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Poster:
|
BNRToast |
Date:
|
Jan 14, 2016 1:53pm |
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Forum:
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texts
|
Subject:
|
Re: The Ampersand Must Be Escaped |
Once again thanks Mr M. You did help link to the text forum but the good old main conglomerated entrance page was a bit like a village green. Now the entrance page is just floating icons without any real organization. The original entrance page housed a link to almost everything at the Archive on one screen.
This was the forum or village green.
https://archive.org/iathreads/posts-display-new.php?limit=50
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Poster:
|
Jeff Kaplan |
Date:
|
Jan 7, 2016 6:02am |
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Forum:
|
texts
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Subject:
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Re: The Beta format is now your only choice. |
forums are still there. there is a tab when a forum is part of af a collection. e.g.:
https://archive.org/details/texts&tab=forum
|
Poster:
|
Dupenhagen Moonbat |
Date:
|
May 23, 2015 4:32pm |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
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Long Live the Archive |
Our beloved (because she
just works) Archive is
on life support. When she finally gives up the ghost and goes, many who give her much of the depth, quality, and
value she possesses, will go too -- and take their
things with them.
Allow me to disabuse you of the notion that those who speak their grievances are the cranky few. As a matter of fact, for each who speaks up, there are probably a few thousand either too reserved or resigned, but who will nonetheless vote with their feet. And to spell it out in no uncertain terms, that means they will delete their
items files (no semantics/legalistic trap for
this archivist) when they go. You who control the apparatus should have a
lonnnnnnng thunk on that one.
This post was modified by Dupenhagen Moonbat on 2015-05-23 23:32:50
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Poster:
|
garthus1 |
Date:
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May 28, 2015 7:55pm |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
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Re: Long Live the Archive |
Dupenhagen,
The Paid Elite and the Second-Class Content Providers:
The INFOPORTAL that a group of us are working on will begin archiving information for its members on our own servers and providing a user-customizable interface which will be compact, fast, resource-stingy, and inherently optimized. The goal here is for users to be able to scrape the web for information that they need and then have it stored in a way which will enable them to quickly access it and utilize it in as optimal a way as-is-possible. See:
http://50.252.101.89/
Should be up and running before the end of next month. If I could say one thing which the INFOPORTAL will have and that the Internet Archive is sorely lacking is transparency. What that means is when someone deals with us they will not be dealing with a black box. All input will be considered and the rough gems and pearls that often come from those who tend to remain in the background will be considered as just as important as those being recommended by so-called academics and experts. The snobby elitist attitude of many who work in Academia and much of the nonprofits which they tend to affiliate with will not be tolerated in our group. If someone offers to work with us on a volunteer basis we will be happy to accommodate them as 'our' progress is 'everyone's' progress. Other than ushering at some shin-dig, I think those in power at the Archive fail to comprehend that there are many intelligent, devoted, and well-intentioned individuals volunteering their precious time, who would also volunteer their expertise and skills. Maybe I would have been better off applying for a job at the Archive ... but I do not think that everything I do should revolve around getting paid to do such work. There are a good number of us who are willing to devote their time and skills to help a noble Enterprise which is benefiting all of us. Sometimes I get the impression that archive management sees two classes of people ... 1 - those getting paid by the Archive to create and run the systems .. and those who are only good for submitting the content which incidentally is just as important and without which there would be no Archive. The second group apparently are second-class citizens and our input is of little importance to the paid elites who run the show.
This type of attitude does not bode well for the long-tern survival of any organization which maintains such a class-stratified system. When creative people get 'pissed-off' they tend to go out of their way to prove a point and it is exactly those people who those in power at the Archive have made second-class participants. Each of my classes always began with a short lecture concerning people who talk about doing things (generally they like to tell people what to do and force their pre-conceived behavior models and beliefs upon others (Academics and bureaucrats tend to fall into this category) and people who just go out and do what is necessary to make systems work; the second type of person can usually be found in the real world creating, innovating, and building systems which optimize other systems or organizations. Harnessing the energy of the second group of people will help build a vibrant, useful, and long-lived organization. These type of people usually vote with their feet as Dupenhagen so astutely points out and will quickly abandon-ship if they feel that their talents, time, and energy are being wasted on satisfying the bloated egos of developers and administrators who care more about eye-candy and kudos; than they do about actually making the systems which they are responsible for better. I remember the Flash fiasco at the Archive some time ago, this waste of time, energy, and resources should have been a learning experience, but apparently there has been no learning taking place at the Archive concerning making stupid decisions.
This problem can be easily addressed … publicize the Site-map and work-flow process plan which is being proposed for the Archive (The INFOPORTAL information was up on our German servers for nearly four months and will be back up when the site is fully functional). I suspect however that there is no plan and that progress is occurring in an ad hoc fashion, prove me wrong please and post the plan otherwise I can only assume that this infected bureaucracy (the Archive Administration) is no different than that of State, Federal or most Local governments … and most non-profits and Corporate entities. If there was a plan and it was publicly accessible, the discourse would be focusing on how to make it better not on “what on Earth are you doing”. This is not the way to innovate and achieve Optimal Work-flow processes.
Nature has proven that competition is good for systems because it forces them to run optimally, this may be hard for some individuals to accept … but when competition comes and the rubber hits the road, the race is often won by the better system … not the one with better eye-candy or cool looks. I raced cars several times in my life when I was younger and was often asked why I did not paint my car nicely or use it for advertising some-such crap being sold locally. I would ask the individual proposing the question what the purpose of a racing car was … WINNING THE RACE, OBVIOULSY … and then ask them what the effect on the capability of the racing car was whether it was painted nicely or with gray primer ...THE ANSWER IS OBVIOUS, NO EFFECT; so why spend my time wasting it on painting the car when how that car ran would determine whether I would win the race or not. So ask the Brainiacs who instituted that gosh-awful infinite scroll-bar concept … I would be less critical of it and that black-bar abomination that drops down when I get near the top of the page … what the purpose of that cr-p was. This would all be discussed sanely if the Site-plan (if one actually exists) would have been released for all to see 6 (six) months ago. This fiasco has gotten a group of us so motivated that hopefully some good will come out of it. Maybe the Archive powers-to-be will actually come up with and present a Site-plan showing what they really intend to do with the Archive System.
Best wishes,
Gerry
Gerard Arthus
409 Lowell Avenue East
Mishawaka, Indiana
46545
Email – garthus801@gmail.com
Cell - 631-335-5250
Home - 574-217-8726
http://www.OpenEducation.org
http://openeducation.org/moodle/ (For Course Portal)
http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?trk=tab_pro
http://www.facebook.com/gerard.arthus
https://archive.org/search.php?query=garthus%20AND%20poem%20AND%20subject%3A%22MES-000-001%22 (Philosophical Discussions)
https://archive.org/details/arthusgerardpoems (Poems)
This post was modified by garthus1 on 2015-05-24 03:19:27
This post was modified by garthus1 on 2015-05-24 03:23:26
This post was modified by garthus1 on 2015-05-24 03:27:16
This post was modified by garthus1 on 2015-05-24 05:33:43
This post was modified by garthus1 on 2015-05-29 02:55:21
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Poster:
|
Dupenhagen Moonbat |
Date:
|
Jun 22, 2015 8:51pm |
|
Forum:
|
texts
|
Subject:
|
The Beta Express Train Wreck |
I haven't blown off your reply, garthus1, but I have been known to be glacial in my correspondence.
I've been working lately with a nifty program called
HTTrack in an effort to download at least a few of the essential elements and parts of the workings of the Internet Archive we've come to love. For example, the program which had provided the flip-book view of your album covers in the Texts section, I had originally thought went bye-bye with Beta. The program had actually been hobbled or otherwise limited to function therein only via fullscreen -- probably by the disabling or restriction of iframes, among other ways. More recently, the fullscreen button is missing, and only the stark stupid black-backgrounded player remains, sans any remnant of the flip-book viewer. The Archive has gone, then, from a classic page which
just works, to a Beta page which is a wreck --
and no, Archive wheels, simply telling folks to change "details" to "stream" in the URL (yet another lame Classic/Beta equivalency dodge) doesn't cut it.
It occurs to me that hobbling is merely the tip of the iceberg in what's coming, as far as
nonfunctionality goes.
Bottom line: we should download the working flip-book viewer (
and the Archive's other essential parts), using tools like HTTrack or whatever's at hand
while we can.
The Archive wheels take the community of archivists and their following -- yes, their following -- for granted. They (the wheels) have an odd notion that people and their efforts are so many widgets, disposable at whim. They are sadly mistaken. They, like their kinsmen in worldview, the purveyors of the Affordable Care Act, for instance, expect a brain trust, whether it's doctors or technologists (hate to break it to you, Archive wheels, but you don't have a corner on that market), to remain in place and take a pummeling. No, thinking people remove themselves to saner circumstances by removing their intellectual capital, whether that means going into business rather than medicine, or leaving, taking their capital offshore -- or offsite, as the case may be.
There's something smelly about the Beta which wheels in charge at the Archive aren't telling us.
I suspect it has to do with that arsehole Eric Schmidt's decision to punish those who don't make their sites more mobile-aesthetic, using his anti-trust law violating Valhalla known as Google and its monopoly power as a club.
I applaud your efforts to counter the sinister turn they're taking by moving in a positive direction and creating a front-end that actually works, rather than pads Eric Frickin' Schmidt's wallet at our expense.
This post was modified by Dupenhagen Moonbat on 2015-06-23 03:51:28
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Poster:
|
mzlizizaninja |
Date:
|
Jun 2, 2015 8:21am |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
|
Re: The Beta Express Train Wreck |
Eric Schmidt????
I didn't know he's on the forum, whats his handle?
Are Sergey & Larry among us, too?
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Poster:
|
R Pal |
Date:
|
May 21, 2015 4:55pm |
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Forum:
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texts
|
Subject:
|
Re: Eew version of Archive.org |
That very "not like any other place" is one of the reasons the original Internet Archive is preferred by so many. My brick and mortar library is also not like any other place and has been that way for over 70 years. Doing shelf expansions and putting in improved lighting is not the same thing as flying disco balls and trick stairways to nowhere.
When situations such as the Archives unpleasant change occur in business there is usually a board member with an agenda and not enough votes or interest to overrule them. Then the costs reach a "no turning back now" stage. Then there are four or five years until the next budgeted upgrade.
Will the 2021 upgrade here require users to wiggle their eyebrows to switch collections because the new chairman likes that motion? The word doomed seems appropriate here.
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Poster:
|
Moongleam |
Date:
|
Apr 10, 2016 12:24pm |
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Forum:
|
texts
|
Subject:
|
Re: Eew version of Archive.org |
Good points.
I'll bet that one of the main reasons for the radical changes in the user interface is that making massive changes requires
massive programmer time. The programmers want to make sure that they keep receiving their salaries, even if the work they are doing is non-essential or even destructive.
They don't care what the regular users want.
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Poster:
|
PDpolice |
Date:
|
Apr 10, 2016 4:41pm |
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Forum:
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texts
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Subject:
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Re: Eew version of Archive.org |
Its surprising how a year ago we still thought our voices counted here.
I wish I had saved more of the old format code. It seems like if we set up the html properly it could be the good format still.
I posted this somewhere else but here it is again. Its a (partial) working old format intro page. As I figure it out I will add stuff. Someone posted some search refinement I think can be used also.
https://ia601504.us.archive.org/5/items/IAMarch2016Good/IAMarch2016Good.htm
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11