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New VLO beta version

Submitted by Twan Goosen on

A new major version of the Virtual Language Observatory faceted browser is currently being developed. 'VLO 3.0' has now reached the beta stage and is available as such at http://catalog.clarin.eu/vlobeta.

 As a beta version, it is functionally complete but has not been fully tested so you may encounter unresolved issues. If you do so, or have any other kind of feedback on its functioning, please send a message to the following address: vlo [at] clarin.eu (vlo[at]clarin[dot]eu).



This version of the contains a complete redesign and largely a reimplementation of the front-end. There are three important design changes that you may need to get used to initially if you are used to the current VLO, but we think will improve the experience for the average user:

  • the 'opening page' of the VLO no longer presents all the facets, but rather invites the user to make a primary selection or enter some search terms; it also has links to go on browsing through the entire collection of records;
  • search results are far more prominent, while not all facets are always 'expanded', leading to a less cluttered view;
  • selection of a specific collection has been visually separated from the other (more cross-cutting) facets to guide the user in making a relevant selection.

Also, please take note of the following:

The following known issues will be addressed before the stable release of VLO 3.0:

  • For facets with a large number of different values, the list of all values (in the pop-up that shows up when you click 'more') takes a long time to load
  • Sorting of values in the list of all facet values does not treat diacritics, special characters and non-Roman script properly
  • Some issues with righ-to-left text

Planned for later (>=3.1):

  • Refined layout and theming
  • Localisation of the interface
  • Possibly an advanced search form (complex queries, also allowing for AND/OR)
  • Improvements to the facet mapping

The web applications utilises JavaScript and AJAX quite extensively but should be completely functional with JavaScript disabled; if you encounter any issues concerning this, please report!

If you would like to report errors or other issues encountered, please mention the (approximate) time and date of occurrence so that we can try to link these to our own logs and reports.

We hope you will like this new version of the VLO front-end and/or send your feedback to vlo [at] carin.eu (vlo[at]carin[dot]eu)