In May 2026 we announced an upcoming large-scale rewrite of musdb’s user interface. Now, it is taking shape and we can announce an actual timeline.
Recap: Scope and Reasons of the Rewrite
musdb as a tool has been around since sometime around 2009 or 2010 – soon after the wider inception of museum-digital. Back then, its scope was to provide an input interface for the recording of publishable museum object data. Since then, the basic architecture to the user interface has remained largely unchanged. While the scope grew to musdb aiming to be a full-featured collection and museum management system, many features that were added were only added “on top” – far enough out of the way to not disturb legacy users or to break existing workflows. In a nutshell: musdb in its current form is quite good, but it’s an application whose user interface has grown without a clear roadmap and a systematic reconsideration and streamlining of the user interface for over a decade.
Since 2009, web development has changed. We do not need to worry about the Internet Explorer anymore, browser compatibility is much better, and web applications can be much more interactive with modern browsers and hardware. To fully make use of these larger advances in the development of musdb, a general change to its architecture is necessary however.
As the architecture changes from a traditional web site with many independent pages to a single page application, the rewrite is indeed that: Instead of generating pages on the server and only displaying them in the browser, musdb’s user interface will be fully generated in the browser, with only the relevant data being queried from the server using dedicated, documented APIs. Even to keep the same functionality, we would need to re-implement its presentation. This means that the rewrite is also a perfect opportunity to streamline the user interface and to reconsider previously unused or overseen functionalities.
On the other hand: With the new user interface changing everything display-related on a technical level, that does not mean that much has to change on a conceptual level. The rewritten musdb will feature the same basic division of pages – lists, editing pages, and pages for adding new entries -, it features the same idea of a tabbed editing pages and – with few exceptions – the same data fields and order thereof.
A Sneak Preview
Where much stays the same, taking a small glimpse into things that will change might be in order. In the following there are a few such previews with small screen casts. Most of these focus on overview / list pages, which are already in a release-ready form.
Navigation
New Filter Options
Display Modes of Overview Pages
Batch Editing On All Overview Pages
Interactive Overviews
Timeline
Now, when will the new UI be done? And when will it be released?
As of now, the development is progressing smoothly and the required building blocks for almost all functionalities are there. Depending on what features one uses, the new UI can already replace the old for most common use cases. To fully do so for common use cases means that at least object editing pages need to be implemented fully. This should be the case as of late September. In the following, seminars and a time period where both versions can be used side-by-side will be had to ensure a somewhat smooth transition from the old to the new UI.
| Sept. 14, 2026 | Blog post |
| Sept. 28 – Oct. 4 | A dialogue will appear on the dashboard of musdb giving notice about the upcoming re-design. It will include a link to the new version. |
| Oct. 30 | The new version will be presented at the German user meetup (online). The update will be finished at this point. |
| Nov. 1 | The login flow will be updated to link users to the new version first. Here they will see a dialogue similar to the old one, giving notice about the re-design and allowing users to use the old version for the time being. |
| Nov. 2 (1 PM) | Seminar on the update (German) Hosted by the museum-digital Deutschland e.V. |
| Nov. 6 (1 PM) | Seminar on the update (English) Hosted by the museum-digital Deutschland e.V. |
| Nov. 16 (10 AM) | Seminar on the update (German) Hosted by the museum-digital Deutschland e.V. |
| Nov. 22 | The dialogue on the dashboard disappears, the old version is removed. |
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