mitraardron

There's a video of the talk I did with Arkadiy (from IPFS) and Feross (from WebTorrent) at the Dweb Summit at https://archive.org/details/youtube-eO6pYYWZBs8?start=10447 it goes into quite a lot of detail about how it was implemented and the challenges we faced along the way.

Of course it is, Javascript is what allows us to run significant code on the browsers without extensions or plugins or downloaded apps/peers, and its amazing how far its come as a language in the last few years. WebAssembly would probably work as well, but was far less developed when we started this project last year.

Yes - we don't yet support some of the more unusual types on the Archive (including "data" and "software")

Its still an experiment to see what was possible with a big site, in today's browsers using some of the emerging tools (IPFS, WebTorrent, GUN). We only test on absolutely current releases of Chrome & Firefox. If you run into problems on the site, there is a feedback button, otherwise you can report directly on https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe7pXiSLrmeLoKvlDi2... or open an issue on https://github.com/internetarchive/dweb-archive/issues

If you run into problems, I'd love to know specific details - this is an experiment to see what was achievable with Dweb tools like IPFS, WebTorrent, Gun on browsers, with a big site like the Archive. It certainly pushes the edge of browsers - and does use the latest ES6 features without much attempt to support older browsers (unlike the production site at archive.org). We only currently test in the latest Chrome & Firefox, though it seems to work (mostly) on current Safari on iPad and iPhone and I heard its working on Android though I haven't seen it yet.

If you can get on, there is a feedback button, if you can't feel free to go straight to the form at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe7pXiSLrmeLoKvlDi2... or open an issue on https://github.com/internetarchive/dweb-archive/issues .