I have noticed these useful design characteristics on these websites, which prevent loss of information when retreived from web archival services (e.g. Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, Archive.Today):
- Client-side screen width (mobile) optimization allows viewing lost websites through the Wayback Machine on more devices.
- The Vlare.TV video watch page (alternative video platform) has a pre-loaded, collapsible menu called “More from:
(Channel name)”
- If a Vlare.TV channel is unavailable for some reason, or in case of deleted videos, the videos listed in that menu could prevent the proof of existence for some videos to vanish into oblivion. I wish YouTube had done that too. That would have saved much information from vanishing. YouTube once had such a menu (2010-2011 and for a short period in early 2019, as far as I can remember), but it didn't use pre-loading but AJAX.
- HTML Meta tags
- Because YouTube channels since 2013 use no single-page channel layout, different parts of a channel are split to different pages, and an archived channel front page does not visibly include information from the other channel tabs (playlists, discussions, recommended channels, “about” page, etc.). But the first 160 characters of the channel description are included in the HTML meta tags responsible for preview cards on social media such as Twitter. Therefore, if the “About” page of a deleted/suspended channel has not been archived, the first 160 characters of the channel description can still be retrieved from the HTML source code if any other page of the channel is archived.
- Tooltips on Twitter's legacy desktop website.
- If a Twitter profile front page is archived, the HTML-preloaded tooltips include information such as exact counts (Tweets, Followings, Followers, etc.) and the absolute time (to the minute) of each visible timeline tweet and the join date.
- Double-layer design of Twitter's legacy desktop website.
- If a tweet page is archived, it also contains the profile page outline in the background. (Full-resolution profile picture and header image, biography text, specified location, specified URL, join date.). This means that if a Twitter account is suspended and only some tweets are archived, the profile outline information is not lost, even if the profile front pages (including “/with_replies”, “/media”, “/likes”) are not archived.
- Reddit's “More posts from the (name) community” section under a post: Post preview snippets of other trending posts on the same subreddit.
- On a capture on Archive-Today (that switched from PhantomJS to Chromium on 2019-11-29), it stores ~20 snippets under the post. For text posts, the snippets contain the first ~400 characters (rough guess). If that post gets deleted before being archived, some contents could be recovered from archived captures of other recent posts.
- BitChute's client-side pagination for tabs on channel pages, trending videos and trending channels.
- When the page is loaded, the contents of all tabs are loaded within, which means that one archived page covers all pages.
- During normal usage: No extra waiting time when navigating between the tabs, because the information is already pre-loaded, which is awesome.
- On BitChute channel pages, the full video descriptions of each listed video are included in the HTML source code, and the contents of the “About” page (total view count, approximate relative channel creation date, channel description, count of uploaded videos, channel category).
- BitChute also uses client-side (CSS-powered) screen width optimization. On too narrow screen widths, it just hides the “Most viewed” side bar on the channel page.
- I probably forgot to mention some more examples I know, but these are currently all that come to my mind.
Some parts of a web page might need JavaScript to show, which isn't supported by Archive.Today, but the information hidden inside a collapsible pre-loaded section or JS-powered client-side pagination can still be retrieved from the HTML source code.
I know, these thoughts sound somewhat abstract to the average Internet user, but I just wanted to get this off my chest (in a positive way).
I have noticed these useful design characteristics on these websites, which prevent loss of information when retreived from web archival services (e.g. Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, Archive.Today):
* [Client-side screen width (mobile) optimization](https://poal.co/s/Whatever/139473) allows viewing lost websites through the Wayback Machine on more devices.
* The Vlare.TV video watch page (alternative video platform) has a pre-loaded, collapsible menu called *“More from: `(Channel name)`”*
* If a Vlare.TV channel is unavailable for some reason, or in case of deleted videos, the videos listed in that menu could prevent the proof of existence for some videos to vanish into oblivion. I wish YouTube had done that too. That would have saved much information from vanishing. YouTube once had such a menu (2010-2011 and for a short period in early 2019, as far as I can remember), but it didn't use pre-loading but AJAX.
* HTML Meta tags
* Because YouTube channels since 2013 use no single-page channel layout, different parts of a channel are split to different pages, and an archived channel front page does not visibly include information from the other channel tabs (*playlists, discussions, recommended channels, “about” page*, etc.). **But** the first 160 characters of the channel description are included in the HTML meta tags responsible for preview cards on social media such as Twitter. Therefore, if the *“About”* page of a deleted/suspended channel has not been archived, the first 160 characters of the channel description can still be retrieved from the HTML source code if any other page of the channel is archived.
* Tooltips on Twitter's legacy desktop website.
* If a Twitter profile front page is archived, the HTML-preloaded tooltips include information such as exact counts (Tweets, Followings, Followers, etc.) and the absolute time (to the minute) of each visible timeline tweet and the join date.
* Double-layer design of Twitter's legacy desktop website.
* If a tweet page is archived, it also contains the profile page outline in the background. (Full-resolution profile picture and header image, biography text, specified location, specified URL, join date.). This means that if a Twitter account is suspended and only some tweets are archived, the profile outline information is **not lost**, even if the profile front pages (including *“/with_replies”, “/media”, “/likes”*) are not archived.
* Reddit's “More posts from the *(name)* community” section under a post: Post preview *snippets* of other trending posts on the same subreddit.
* On a capture on Archive-Today (that switched from PhantomJS to Chromium on 2019-11-29), it stores ~20 snippets under the post. For text posts, the snippets contain the first ~400 characters (rough guess). If that post gets deleted before being archived, some contents could be recovered from archived captures of other recent posts.
* BitChute's client-side pagination for tabs on channel pages, trending videos and trending channels.
* When the page is loaded, the contents of all tabs are loaded within, which means that one archived page covers all pages.
* During normal usage: No extra waiting time when navigating between the tabs, because the information is already pre-loaded, which is awesome.
* On BitChute channel pages, the **full** video descriptions of each listed video are included in the HTML source code, and the contents of the *“About”* page (total view count, approximate relative channel creation date, channel description, count of uploaded videos, channel category).
* BitChute also uses client-side (CSS-powered) screen width optimization. On too narrow screen widths, it just hides the *“Most viewed”* side bar on the channel page.
* I probably forgot to mention some more examples I know, but these are currently all that come to my mind.
Some parts of a web page might need JavaScript to show, which isn't supported by Archive.Today, but the information hidden inside a collapsible pre-loaded section or JS-powered client-side pagination can still be retrieved from the HTML source code.
I know, these thoughts sound somewhat abstract to the average Internet user, but I just wanted to get this off my chest (in a positive way).
(post is archived)