[bsder]

I stand corrected. Thanks for all your work.

And I still miss the AltaVista illustrated diagram (Java Applet) that would allow you to drill down and specialize the search results. No modern search has ever matched that, again.

[BryantD]

It was a fun place to be. Sorry if I came across as curt — rereading that I was a bit more blunt than I intended. Sick cat has been stressing me.

[bsder]

No offense was taken. It's always good to hear from the people who actually did stuff to set the record straight.

> It was a fun place to be.

It was. I was in the hardware side during the Hostile Giveaway(tm) to Intel and Compaq.

Good luck with your cat.

[jhy]

That feature sounds amazing! I tried searching wayback etc but wasn't able to find any more details. Do you happen to know of any screenshots / deeper descriptions for it?

Perhaps we could nerd snipe Marginalia Search to add it :)

[bsder]

I remember it being a Java applet with animations, but my memory could be terribly faulty at this point.

Following your comments and trying to trail things out, the only thing I can find is a reference to AltaVista LiveTopics.

https://dannysullivan.com/why-search-sucks-you-wont-fix-it-t...

I suspect what I used was that "GRAPH" button in the AltaVista Refine picture.

We might want to archive that image. It seems like the only evidence that this stuff ever existed.

[jhy]

Thanks, AltaVista LiveTopics is a good keyword. I found:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Alta-Vista-LiveTopic-Gra...

which has some different coverage.

I did try to archive the blog you linked but unfortunately the owner is blocking it with robots.txt

User-agent: ia_archiver Disallow: /

[bsder]

That hyperbolic tree looks very close to what my faulty memory recalls.

I suspect it was a later incarnation that I used.