Browsertrix is the hosted, high-fidelity, browser-based crawling service from Webrecorder designed to make web archiving easier and more accessible for all!
Browsertrix has lots of options! Not all of them must be edited to create a new crawl workflow and requiring new users to sift through the multiple pages of configuration paramaters isn't ideal when they can get crawling by just chaging one of them.
For those already familliar with Browsertrix, the configuration stage of crawling is pretty quick work! We want to ensure that this remains the case.
Proposed Solution
We will implement a toggle switch on the workflow setup screen to toggle between a simplified and full state. This toggle switch will be labeled "Show all options" or similar.
If "Show all options" is unchecked (the default state for new users) all tabs on the left side will be removed and only a single screen with the following options will be shown:
Crawl Scope (and related progessively disclosed fields)
Crawl Start URL
Name
Tags
Implementation Notes
The show all toggle should persist when possible based on the user's local preferences.
If a user has show all disabled, the next time they create a crawl workflow it should open in the simple view
If a user has show all disabled, but is looking at a workflow with non-simple options set, it should open in the advanced view and the toggle should be disabled / removed
If a user has show all disabled but the org admin has set a non-simple org default, the simple view should be shown but the setting should still be applied in the background
The workflow settings viewer sections should continue to display all workflow settings as they currently do
Context
Browsertrix has lots of options! Not all of them must be edited to create a new crawl workflow and requiring new users to sift through the multiple pages of configuration paramaters isn't ideal when they can get crawling by just chaging one of them.
For those already familliar with Browsertrix, the configuration stage of crawling is pretty quick work! We want to ensure that this remains the case.
Proposed Solution
We will implement a toggle switch on the workflow setup screen to toggle between a simplified and full state. This toggle switch will be labeled "Show all options" or similar.
If "Show all options" is unchecked (the default state for new users) all tabs on the left side will be removed and only a single screen with the following options will be shown:
Implementation Notes