About Better Pipe Organ Database
Introduction: The new user interface
Since the 1950s, the Organ Historical Society (OHS) has meticulously collected information about tens of thousands of pipe organs in the United States, Canada and around the world. This database is a valuable resource for all organists, and all high school organists can recount spending countless hours flipping through the different entries to see the amazing variety of different pipe organs and their pictures, stoplists, and other bits of information. These entries were submitted by members and non-members alike, contributing to the amazing wealth of information, and despite a decision to make the database available to members only (the OHS reneged on this decision less than one day later due to online backlash, a sign of how beloved this database is), it has remained available for all, cementing its place as the best resource for this information.
Around the Summer of 2024, webmaster John Roper and the OHS refactored the Pipe Organ Database, making a number of changes both in the appearence and in the background. This refactoring brought about a number of positive changes including faster load times and an API endpoint, making the information in the database easier to parse. Another change that was brought was a completely new visual layout.
While the new user interface was hailed as a positive and much-needed change due to looking more modern, it regrettably brought about a number of drawbacks compared to the older user interface. In fact, it seems that the new interface has no actual advantages over the previous interface (This article will not discuss wether unimportant changes such as the dark-mode style are downgrades, but suffice it to say that in my opinion a more plain page style is preferrable for reasons that will be discussed below).
- Many bits of text are larger and arranged in a worse, more space-consuming way in the new user interface. Depending on the size of your screen, when you visit an organ page the only text that you will see is the Builder's name and year of building, the address of the church, the number of stops and ranks, and the ID numbers (followed by a disclaimer that the ID numbers are not worth knowing because they are subject to change in the future. See the last point in this list) along with one image that is too large (or the OHS logo if there is none). With a more plain page layout, the entry could be more compact without sacrificing readibility.
- In the current layout, images are too large. In addition, a JavaScript module is used to change the user interface in such a way that when the user clicks on an image it is displayed in a box on the same page instead of opening the image in a new tab. In the previous design, the images appeared at the top-right of the page, meaning that the user would instantly see the images of the organ. Now, the images are found in a section further down the page. The previous experience was replicated by putting one of the images in this place, but it results in the image being on the page two times, an unnecessary redundancy which results in taking up more space.
- The consoles section of each page is too large, and too much space is dedicated to listing each thing that the console does not have. More than 90% (by a conservative estimate) of the organs in the database do not have record/playback, midi, rollschweller, or other specifics, and many pages do not have any attributes of the console listed at all. However, with the current user interface every single page dedicates multiple columns to listing that the organ has no midi, no record/playback, no sequencer, no rollschweller, unknown key action, unknown stop action, etc...
- The documents are an important part of many organ pages. They can contain many treasures such as scans of contracts or brochures containing valuable information, and countless documents have been uploaded by the dedicated users of the Pipe Organ Database. However, these documents are now hidden behind a radio menu (when the new user interface was originally released, it was hidden behind a drop-down menu, making this section almost impossible to find. This situation has thankfully improved since then), and the notes are shown by default.
- The way that stoplists in the new format (I call them "type-0" stoplists, as opposed to text files) are displayed is lacking. The "note" for each stop can be revealed by clicking on the stop name (a new feature that is made possible because of using JavaScript). However, there is no indication that a stop has a note attached to it. Therefore, a user would have to click on every single stop one after the other to see if there are any interesting notes that can help the user learn more about the organ. Even with the notes hidden behind a click, the way that these stoplists are displayed is more space-consuming than if the same stoplist had been written in the older text form.
- The new Pipe Organ Database requires JavaScript to run. If you attempt to visit the Pipe Organ Database with JavaScript disabled, the warning "We're sorry but Pipe Organ Database doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Please enable it to continue." is displayed. This article is too short to convince everyone (including those with limited computer experience) that websites that don't use JavaScript are objectively better than those that do. However, JavaScript is completely unnecessary for this website, the act of requesting JavaScript files and running them on the client results in both parties wasting energy and taking longer than if the server generated the page and sent it to the client with no JavaScript, and requiring JavaScript unnecessarily excludes those who disable it for any reason, including those who use screen readers or text browsers and those who disable JavaScript for security reasons. The waste of energy affects mobile devices the most. The new user interface includes some new features that attempt to improve the experience. One example of this is that the new search page constantly requests new search results while the user is typing. However, while it seems like this is an improvement, in fact it is unnecessary and all of the extra API requests waste HTTPS connections, network bandwidth, and energy in both the client (the user's web browser) and server.
- The Pipe Organ Database tracks users using Google Analytics, an invasion of user privacy.
- One unfortunate result of the database refactoring is that the ID numbers of organs and stoplists were changed. It is clear that the importance of maintaining permanent links was known, because there is a permanent redirect to take users from pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/... links to pipeorgandatabase.org/instruments/... links (including the change of ID number). However, there was no such redirect for stoplists, and the path for looking at stoplists was changed, so all pipeorgandatabase.org/stoplist/... links that people have left around the internet for years are permanently broken. This is an inexcusable shortcoming, and for a database such as this one, this lack of care for maintaining ID numbers and permanent links that are saved by its loyal users is unacceptable. (Note that the Pipe Organ Database attempts to avoid blame for this by including the disclaimer "These are database IDs that may change. Don't use as academic reference.")
Unfortunately, despite the benefits caused by refactoring the Pipe Organ Database, including faster load times and making the information of the database available in JSON form, the new user interface inconceivably manages to have less text and information on the screen while simultaneously being less accessible (due to requiring JavaScript and the less plain page layout) taking up more space (for the same organ, the page tends to be larger when displayed in the new format than in the old) and appearing more cluttered (due to the visual style).
A new alternative
I love the Pipe Organ Database. Over the last few years I have done my part to improve the entries concerning organs that I have played (see First Congregational Church, Westfield, NJ). I enjoyed the way the previous user interface looked, and when the new user interface was released, I and a small number of other people felt that it was a downgrade and any benefits did not outweigh the negatives.
Therefore, instead of pointlessly complaining about it on Discord, endlessly arguing with people who do prefer how it looks now, or foolishly thinking that I should get to make the Pipe Organ Database look exactly like only I want, I decided to create my own alternative front-end to change the appearence while displaying the same information. My goal is NOT to represent myself as the owner or curator of the database, or to detract from the Organ Historical Society (and its sponsors) and the work spent creating this database. Rather, the goal is to present an alternative user interface, one that is based on how it looked previously (but even more simple), for me and other people to use, either because we prefer how it looks or we are limited by not using JavaScript, so that we can continue to enjoy the Pipe Organ Database and not be hindered by the limitations of the new user interface.
My main goals with creating this "better" (or, alternative) Pipe Organ Database front-end are:
- Use as plain a style as possible. By being confined to a simple layout consisting of HTML header ("<h1>"), paragraph, list and form blocks, this page can be easily navigated and displayed by screen readers and text browsers. I invite you to try browsing this website using a text browser like Lynx and see what your experiences are. The lack of a special style also makes the website more accessible because necessary accommodations (not limited to dark mode or "reading mode" on MacOS Safari for instance) will encounter minimal issues.
- Create this website in such a way that it doesn't require any JavaScript to run. Not only will browsers with JavaScript disabled be able to use this alternative front-end perfectly fine, the experience will be exactly the same. I believe that this will not encroach on the intended user experience (given by pipeorgandatabase.org) in any way. This will lessen the computational load on the client (the user's web-browser) and server (the Pipe Organ Database API server).
- Protect user privacy by not using any cookies or trackers and not requiring JavaScript.
If the existence of this alternative front-end is offensive to you, I humbly ask you to consider that this is presented merely as an alternative to give more options to organists like me who continue to love the Pipe Organ Database.
-William Rehwinkel, December, 2024.
