This Page is Designed to Last

#1

Post by tannhaeuser » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 10:58 PM UTC

This Page is Designed to Last
jeffhuang.com

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#2

Post by mellowdream » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:25 PM UTC

This is why I've been saving PDFs/HTMLs or even just taking screenshots of webpages I find especially meaningful or important to me... Archiving things as files this way can get kind of tedious and definitely feels primitive at times (we made the LHC but I'm here not expecting the same pages of cool interviews, designs, etc. to be up next month), but what can you do?

But it's nice to know you're not alone in wanting nice things to last :)

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#3

Post by ggm » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:27 PM UTC

pURL are hard. I have one which is an X.509 enforced pointer to a PDF which is 'terms and conditions' and the pain to ensure the link never dies (its embedded in binary objects which are long lived, and out in the world beyond our control) is non-zero. Change publishing model, change CMS, the pURL is at risk.

Publication models where you pay the cost for somebody to be the archival reference make some sense. URI pointing into a store. Buckets in Google? But if you decided to move on, could you get a retained 302 redirect to point to the new home?

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#4

Post by fouc » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:27 PM UTC

Webpages should be archiver friendly.

Imagine sticking a proxy between our browser and the internet that automatically archives all webpages we attempt to browse to, and then only lets you view the archive. How much of the internet would you be able to see?

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#5

Post by JoelMcCracken » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:28 PM UTC

Often when I am trying to find a dead link I can find an archived version on archive.org. Just a reminder for anyone who it might help.

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#6

Post by trynewideas » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:32 PM UTC

Why minify SVGs, but not HTML? Aren't both gzipped by the server? Is it because you're not expected to hand-edit SVGs in this scenario?

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#7

Post by shasheene » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:34 PM UTC

There's no reason why a web browser bookmark action doesn't automatically create a WARC (web archive) format.

Heck, with the cost of storage so low, recording every webpage you ever visit in searchable format is also very realistic. Imagine having the last 30 years of web browsing history saved on your local machine. This would especially be useful when in research mode and deep diving a topic.

[1] https://github.com/machawk1/warcreate

[2] https://github.com/machawk1/wail

[3] https://github.com/internetarchive/warcprox

EDIT: I forgot to mention https://github.com/webrecorder/webrecorder (the best general purpose web recorder application I have used during my previous research into archiving personal web usage)

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#8

Post by Zamicol » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:35 PM UTC

Isn't the obvious missing technical component cryptographic hashes?

A hash can represent any resource.

IPFS, or something like it, is the missing component for long term retrieval.

EDIT: or something like https://github.com/google/trillian

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#9

Post by kodt » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:38 PM UTC

mellowdream wrote: post #2

This is why I've been saving PDFs/HTMLs or even just taking screenshots of webpages I find especially meaningful or important to me... Archiving things as files this way can get kind of tedious and definitely feels primitive at times (we made the LHC but I'm here not expecting the same pages of cool interviews, designs, etc. to be up next month), but what can you do? But it's nice to know you're not alone in wanting…

Yes, I wish I had started doing that years ago. I went back through all my old bookmarks that I had saved from the past 2 decades and a significant portion are dead now.

Re: This Page is Designed to Last

#10

Post by arjie » Thu, Dec 19, 2019, 11:39 PM UTC

shasheene wrote: post #7

There's no reason why a web browser bookmark action doesn't automatically create a WARC (web archive) format. Heck, with the cost of storage so low, recording every webpage you ever visit in searchable format is also very realistic. Imagine having the last 30 years of web browsing history saved on your local machine. This would especially be useful when in research mode and deep diving a topic. [1] https://github.com…

In practice how is this different from MHTML? I think most browsers have built-in support for MHTML so it should be possible to build that part easily.