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Geek Culture / Moddable

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Plystire
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Posted: 27th Aug 2011 01:38
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There are so many things nowadays that people just love to mod. People mod games, browsers, even their OS.

I was thinking... what if people were able to mod a website? Would this be useful? Basically they can change any little piece of the website to their liking, or even change the whole thing! Of course, modding is aimed at coders not at the general public... but the general public would have an easy way of accessing "published" mods made by other people.
I think this would let people have free-range on their homepage, at a level never seen before.

What does everyone here think of this? Do you think it would be worth persuing? What sort of problems do you see arising from this idea?


~Plystire

A rose is only a rose until it is held and cherished -- then it becomes a treasure.
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Oolite
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Posted: 27th Aug 2011 01:59
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It's a nice idea having that level of customisation into a website, but to kick off it would really have to be implemented into a website that people already use to improve functionality of said website.
If it was designed to be a place you could set as a homepage with all of the tools, feeds and links that you use most frequently on the internet, well...

That being said it would be a nice idea.
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Plystire
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Posted: 27th Aug 2011 02:15
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iGoogle provides customization... which is also rather limited. Sure I can move tools around, add some news feeds, watch some youtube, but at the end of the day... it's still iGoogle, which is just like everyone else's iGoogle.

What I see coming of this is allowing anyone to completely change the site. Perhaps they want the site to serve an entirely different purpose, or maybe they just don't like these certain parts of it. Allowing them to change it would see to it that everyone can be happy with the site. Even average joeshmoe could surf through the mod database and find some things he liked.


~Plystire

A rose is only a rose until it is held and cherished -- then it becomes a treasure.
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xplosys
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Posted: 27th Aug 2011 03:43
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I'm not sure I get the whole concept. I can see where customization or MODing a narrow type of site - such as a landing or portal - would be good, but completely changing the site into something else? For what purpose? And don't say any. LOL

I don't think I'm understanding the concept. Give me a scenario.

Brian.

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Agent Dink
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Posted: 27th Aug 2011 04:26
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Stylish plugin for Firefox allows you to alter websites. You can do some pretty cool things with it.

For example, the browser based service ticket software my employer uses is total weaksauce and is poorly programmed. Firefox renders certain text boxes as dark green with black text. Fail. I used stylish to turn those dark green boxes into nice light blue boxes.

http://lossofanonymity.wordpress.com
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bitJericho
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Posted: 27th Aug 2011 04:40
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https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/


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zenassem
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Posted: 27th Aug 2011 04:45
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@Jerico@day,,
I was about to mention Grease Monkey. I used it to enhance/change the plain look of Facebook,, also used it in combination with ??? to hide all the ads on the side of the feed. I'll have too look up the plugin for that.

Your signature has been erased by a mod please reduce it to 600 x 120.
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Plystire
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Posted: 28th Aug 2011 03:33 Edited at: 28th Aug 2011 03:34
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I understand that typically a website is designed for a specific purpose and is designed to fulfill that purpose well. I'm not saying "let's change facebook into amazon" or whatever, because that would be pretty pointless, lol. Normally it's the portals and homepages that people like to customize, so that'd be the aim here.

Of course, everyone has different interests, enjoys different art-styles, everyone's unique. I was wondering if it'd be worthwhile to let people modify the site (almost) entirely, to fulfill their own needs. I'm not talking about something as simple as providing a list of predefined gadgets for people to choose from, though that level of customization would be available to those who don't have the means of modifying the site themselves.

Let's take iGoogle as an example, since that's been mentioned. You're given a limited amount of gadgets to use to "make" your space. That's wonderful and all, but I don't think that's enough. As a developer, I think it'd be awesome if I could code my own gadgets and use them in my portal. But making an entire portal is cumbersome and definitely not for everyone. It'd be great if I could just code the gadget and have it "magically" work in my portal, capable of interfacing with other gadgets, having access to social networking, IMs, etc.

Just as facebook apps have access to posting on facebook, my custom portal gadgets should have access to the things I care about, making it easy to code something fun and useful through an intuitive API that allows me to not only add content to my portal in the form of gadgets, but, if I so choose, allows me to change significant portions of the portal itself.


I'm not sure how to describe it any other way, honestly.


I see FireFox plugins being mentioned, too. While those are great, they don't allow you to change the site's functionality or add content very easily, if at all. Not to mention it's restricted to only firefox users, and firefox isn't for everyone. For this type of site to be successful, it would need to be cross-browser compatible.


~Plystire

A rose is only a rose until it is held and cherished -- then it becomes a treasure.
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ShaunRW
DBPro Developer
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Posted: 28th Aug 2011 12:59
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I would MOD an internet banking site, so that i can add as much money to my account for free.

Because of this, you would have to be careful deciding whats modifiable or not.


ShaunRWs Timer Plugin.
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Indicium
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Posted: 28th Aug 2011 15:40
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Quote: "I would MOD an internet banking site, so that i can add as much money to my account for free. "


It would only be able to manipulate the browser side of things, whereas banking will be done serverside and no doubt behind a few firewalls.

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Plystire
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Posted: 29th Aug 2011 02:46
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@ShaunRW:

No doubt we would have to be careful for security reasons... but being a homepage, I don't think we'd have to be THAT careful.


~Plystire

A rose is only a rose until it is held and cherished -- then it becomes a treasure.
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Oolite
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Posted: 29th Aug 2011 20:57
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I still don't know what you mean about recoding an entire website to fit with what you want.
Lets take iGoogle(again), it's easy enough to create your own gadgets for igoogle. You can also create a totally new theme or choose one from a list that other people have created..
In essence I could turn the entire iGoogle interface into a giant RSS reader which pulls all my favourite articles from around the web. I could turn it into a social networking page that pulls all the feeds from my facebook/twitter/myspace and shows them all to me on one page. I could embed a list of flash games that I'm currently playing all into one page. I can turn this into anything if I wanted to.
You're right, this is adding things on top of an existing website but I really do think I need clarification on what you actually intend to do. Is it add ons using an API, or is it recoding down to pure html level. If it's addons then you might aswell use igoogle as it is well established enough to actually have some content on there. If it's recoding on a pure HTML level then why don't people just make their own webpage and host it on some free hosting? Is it just the aspect of sharing that makes this different?
I agree it would be pretty cool to see what other people do with their own little space on the web but I could probably guarantee it won't be what I want to do with it.

I think the best way to go about it if you were going to let users modify to a pure html level is designing a stupidly easy language that anyone can use that just derives to html, but leave the option for experienced users to do some fantastic things with pure html.

One concern is that you'd need a space to store all of these "Mods", which would require some beefy storage if this ever kicks off. Then there is the aspect of how to support that storage, that would require adverts and the best way to get money from those is to force your users to have them on their homepage, which, personally, would put me off using it instantly.

Unless I hit the nail on the head this time and I haven't misunderstood the concept, you're just going to have to make this a reality so I can mess around and get a feel for what it's like.
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Plystire
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Posted: 30th Aug 2011 00:30 Edited at: 30th Aug 2011 00:35
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Quote: "Is it add ons using an API, or is it recoding down to pure html level."


Simply put, both.

The idea I have is that the site isn't just a collection of gadgets displayed for the user. These gadgets aren't just sitting on a predefined surface, only organizable in the fashion predetermined by the site designer. No, the site itself is an empty page if there were no gadgets. There are gadgets that manage gadgets, gadgets that load other gadgets when you tell them to, gadgets to search the web, gadgets to find you news articles, gadgets that change the behavior of other gadgets. Basically gadgets that intermingle to form your homepage.

A user would be able to add new gadgets to their homepage, similar to iGoogle, but this is an open-source project. Say I don't want a search bar at the top of my homepage, or I just don't want it at the top. I could change the gadget that handles that and put it where I want or take it down completely in favor of something else. Say I don't just want a LIST of flash games that I'm playing, I want them to actually BE on my homepage (loaded at will, of course).


As far as storage space for the Mods is concerned, yes we would need a beefy database to store everything in. However, to make things easy on the developer, you can modify the site through local files. No uploading is done whatsoever, it would just load the modified files directly from your computer and display them in the live site. What better way to test your gadget than to see it working live, right? (I have confirmed this method to work. It's quite handy, actually! And load times are second to none )


Thanks for the responses, Oolite. I would like to talk more about this with you and clarify details. So, if you want, you can shoot me an email about it, or add me on Skype (same as forum name). I'd email you myself, but that information must be priviledged and I understand.


~Plystire

A rose is only a rose until it is held and cherished -- then it becomes a treasure.
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Red Eye
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Posted: 30th Aug 2011 02:58
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This is called Drupal. Open source modable website creation tool. Where people can start off a basic or advanced layout and be able to "mod" the whole site. And thus being it an open source CMS. What would it be different then that?

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Plystire
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Posted: 30th Aug 2011 05:32
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Took a look at it. Yeah, it's open-source alright... but where am I going to put the website that I make with Drupal? They certainly won't host it for me.

So, I suppose the difference here would be... you don't have to LEAVE this site to use the modifications you made. You use the modifications of the site, on the site, with the site, without going anywhere. You don't have to pay for server upkeep, or rent a domain.

At the end of the day, what I'm talking about here is a homepage, designed to act as a homepage unless modified to act otherwise. If you want to show off your modification to the site, linking people to it wouldn't be so farfetched, would it? That could be done fairly easily.


~Plystire

A rose is only a rose until it is held and cherished -- then it becomes a treasure.
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Silvester
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Posted: 30th Aug 2011 15:06 Edited at: 30th Aug 2011 15:08
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Wouldn't this be more interesting if you wrote your own web parser for certain scripts? That way you can control what the end user has access to, and simply assign space to them to use on a webserver.. Allowing them to create an account, they get some standard script(Filtered HTML/PHP?) and then they're able to just give it a go? Along with a WYSIWYG editor for those that don't feel like scripting shiny features in, ofcourse.

Taking it a step further, they could assign other users to have access to their 'site' script, and allow them to edit it as well.

This way, they would have full control over the site, and with the WYSIWYG editor you could ofcourse add 'widget' like features. It sounds like a lot of work, and it will likely be.. But this is my theory, if not idea on how such a thing could work without limiting the end user too much(Shielding off the core website's database ofcourse, for safety reasons).

And public URLs shouldn't be that much of a hassle.. Because you can set your parser to load data from a specific username e.g.:

http://www.persopage.net/?PageID=MyUsername
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Oolite
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Posted: 31st Aug 2011 23:55
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Quote: "Thanks for the responses, Oolite. I would like to talk more about this with you and clarify details. So, if you want, you can shoot me an email about it, or add me on Skype (same as forum name). I'd email you myself, but that information must be priviledged and I understand. "

Don't do Skype because most people can't understand me yam yam accent

Only got rid of my email on here because I was getting an awful lot of spam. You can get in touch with me through my barely updated blog if you want. I'll help where I can.
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the_winch
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Posted: 1st Sep 2011 00:36
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I'm pretty sure the already mentioned greasemonkey / userscripts.org already let you do this to the extent possible. Yes you need firefox, chrome or opera but I don't see how this could be done without inbuilt browser support.
I think trying to do anything more than greasemonkey is just going to break how browsers are supposed to handle websites.

By way of demonstration, he emitted a batlike squeak that was indeed bothersome.
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Plystire
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Posted: 2nd Sep 2011 09:20
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@Oolite:

I'll try. I did see your blog before, but didn't know if their was a contact button or something.


@the_winch:

Greasemonkey works the way it does, because it's supposed to effect any website.

The reason this idea is feasible is because it's restricted to only this site.
Also, I have already tested the idea and it works. I just wanted to know if people thought the idea would be worth persuing before I dump anymore time into it.


~Plystire

A rose is only a rose until it is held and cherished -- then it becomes a treasure.
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