ArchivistaDMS optimized for mobile devices
Egg, January 8, 2025: ArchivistaDMS as a document management system (DMS) has been working web-based since the birth of the ArchivistaBox in 2005. And yet there are always good reasons to optimize ArchivistaDMS. With version 2025/I, the mobile view for smartphones has been relaunched, which will be discussed in this blog. The ArchivistaBox 2025/I also contains other gems, more of which in the second part. And of course AVMultimedia has also been brought up to date.
When pixels overrun the screen
Web technologies and devices are constantly evolving. While the displays of smartphones were still small at the beginning of the new millennium and the resolution was, to put it mildly, “grotty”, the current situation is that the pixel resolution on small devices is almost exploding.
While the screen of the “original” iPhone in 2007 could only display 320 x 480 pixels, the resolution has increased by several factors in the almost two decades of the smartphone. The current Sony Xperia 1 V has an incredible 3840 x 1644 pixels.
Although this results in a razor-sharp image, the individual pixels are almost impossible to read on the small display. In the previous ArchivistaDMS WebApp, the number of pixels was used as the “measure of things”. To ensure that the information remained “readable”, the elements were enlarged by a factor of 2.x.
So far so good, ArchivistaDMS did its job. However, as soon as entries were made, the virtual keyboard appeared and zoomed the corresponding input field to the highest possible resolution. This led to a rather choppy experience when working with ArchivistaDMS.
With ArchivistaDMS 2025/I the display is independent of the display of the virtual keyboard. Zooming is suppressed in the process. If you prefer to work in the old way, the desired zoom factor can now be set in WebAdmin under Manage archive in the ‘Maximum scaling (0.3-1.5)’ field.
The initial zoom mode for the mobile view can now also be defined in WebAdmin with ‘Scaling on mobile devices (0.3-0.5)’. Enough of the “gray” theory. The following video presents the new ArchivistaDMS 2025/I WebApp in six minute (Video in German with English subtitles).
The small demo shows the new WebApp of the ArchivistaBox 2025/I very well. Incidentally, WebApp means that no app is required on the smartphone, as ArchivistaDMS runs directly in the smartphone’s web browser.
The video shows a comprehensive audio and video archive. The current data stock comprises approx. 30 TByte (not 30 GB as stated in the video),, realized with the ArchivistaBox Matterhorn. The ArchivistaBox demo archive is also briefly presented. This can be accessed directly at downloads.archivista.ch. Around 30,000 books from the Gutenberg project are available to work with.
Further innovations in ArchivistaBox 2025/I
In addition to the completely renewed mobile version of ArchivistaDMS, there are further innovations in ArchivistaDMS 2025/I.
The familiar video optimization from ArchivistaBox 2024/II required three manual steps. The programs vidopt1, vidopt2 and vidopt3 had to be run individually. Now all three programs can be started directly via vidopt.
The backup concept when working with USB hard disks has been adapted so that the archives can be distributed more easily across several hard disks. The ‘data’ folder now contains the subfolders archmulti and archmulti0 to archmulti9. This makes it easier and clearer to back up multimedia files. For example, the folder ‘archmulti2’ can be placed on a separate hard disk. To do this, it is sufficient to create the directory ‘data’ and ‘archmulti2’ on the hard disk to be used. Only ‘archmulti2’ will be saved on this hard disk. There is also a separate folder for the device settings with ‘cust’. This folder is no longer automatically restored during a restore. This makes it easier to restore archives to another machine (with a different IP address).
The archiving process for large archives runs 3 to 10 times faster. This applies in particular to archives larger than 10 TByte.
AVMultimedia 2025/I also available
AVMultimedia 2025/I has updated versions of JDownloader2 and FreeTube. Both programs are extremely practical when it comes to obtaining files from the Internet for which there are usually no direct download links.
The two applications are included directly in the large ISO file (avmultimedia_2025.iso). Optionally, the applications can also be retrofitted to AVMultimi 2025 or the ArchivistaBox by placing the ‘opt25.os’ file in the /home/data folder. A restart is then required. ArchivistaBox customers can also have the optional applications installed directly via the online update; a corresponding flag can be stored in the customer-specific installations. Enjoy!
