Integrate the Live and Archived Web Viewing Experience
Mink is a Google Chrome extension that uses the [Memento protocol](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7089) to indicate that a page a user is viewing on the live web has an archived copy and to give the user access to the copy. If no copies exist, the extension provides one-button access to preserve the page in various web archives and to easily view the page once it has been preserved.
## Features
- Seamlessly see how well-archived a live web page is while browsing.
- Using the interface, quickly navigate to past captures of the page and traverse available captures from multiple web archives.
- No captures? No problem! With a single button click, Mink will submit the web page you are currently viewing to multiple web archives.
- Too many captures? When the set gets large, Mink intuitively organizes the set of captures for easy, hierarchical, time-based selection.
## Installation
* Go to the [Chrome Web Store](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mink/jemoalkmipibchioofomhkgimhofbbem)
* Click "Add to Chrome" to install Mink.
* Once installed, click the Mink icon in the Chrome toolbar to see how well-archived the current page is, and navigate to the past.
## Usage
The extension works by querying the archives when you browse the web. For each page you visit, Mink sends an asynchronous request to a Memento aggregator and displays the number of mementos (web pages for the URL in the archives) using a badge over the Mink/Memento icon in the browser's button bar.
### Selecting a Memento
For web pages with few mementos, the dropdown menu is the most accessible way to view the memento in a web archive (e.g., [Internet Archive's Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/)). To do this, click the Mink button bar icon, select the date/time from the dropdown and click the "View" button. When viewing a memento, selecting the icon again will return an interface that allows you to navigate to other mementos or quickly return to the live web.
### No mementos? No problem!
If no mementos exist in the archive, the extension will indicate this with a red "no mementos" icon and give the option to submit the URL to various web archives for preservation.
## Examples
1. [A niche site with few mementos](https://github.com/machawk1/Mink/wiki/Examples#use-case-1-a-niche-site-with-few-mementos)
1. [A popular site with many mementos](https://github.com/machawk1/Mink/wiki/Examples#use-case-2-a-popular-site-with-many-mementos)
## Development
Chrome supports debugging extensions by loading them from the local file system. To do this, go to `Window > Extensions`, enable the `Developer mode` switch, click the `Load unpacked` button, and select the `mink-plugin` directory in the working directory clone of this repository.
For packaging the extension and releasing a new version, enter the `mink-plugin` directory, type
zip -r /where/to/store/resulting/mink.zip *
...access the [Chrome Developer Dashboard](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/developer/dashboard/) and upload the `.zip` to the Mink entry.
## Configuration
Settings are available to customize Mink's functions and data retention including:
* Customizing the source of the Memento aggregator.
* Tailoring the TimeMap caching setting for efficient querying.
* Defining Ignore Lists for sites where you don't want Mink to run.
To access these settings, right click on the Mink icon and select Options.
# Contributing
Contributions are welcome. Please see the CONTRIBUTING.md file in this repository for more information.
### Citing Project
This project was originally presented at the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries ([Read the PDF](https://matkelly.com/papers/2014_dl_mink.pdf)) and can be cited as follows:
> Mat Kelly, Michael L. Nelson, and Michele C. Weigle, __"Mink: Integrating the Live and Archived Web Viewing Experience Using Web Browsers and Memento,"__ In _Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL)_, pages 469-470, London, England, September 2014.
```bib
@INPROCEEDINGS { kelly-dl2014-mink,
AUTHOR = { Mat Kelly and Michael L. Nelson and Michele C. Weigle },
TITLE = { Mink: Integrating the Live and Archived Web Viewing Experience Using Web Browsers and Memento },
BOOKTITLE = { Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) },
YEAR = { 2014 },
MONTH = { 9 },
ADDRESS = { London, UK },
PAGES = {469--470},
DOI = {10.1109/JCDL.2014.6970229}
}
```
## License
MIT