The Wayback Machine (WM) was first launched in 2001 using proprietary software written by Alexa Internet.  A few years ago, the Internet Archive wrote our own version of the Wayback and made that software open source.  We have been hosting smaller collections using the newer, open source software but had not attempted to transfer the entire, web wide collection to use the new software… until now!

The beta software and index are designed to be faster than the classic WM.  The two other biggest differences you’re likely to notice are the new toolbar on archived pages, and the new look of the calendar of page captures.

The new toolbar will hopefully make it easier for you to know what date you’re looking at, move through time more quickly using the sparkline of captures over time, and do new searches without having to leave the page you’re looking at.

The new calendar page is just cooler.  If you have suggestions, let us know!