Welcome! This tutorial was designed for the attendees of the University of Illinois' CS@ILLINOIS SAIL, an event for high school students to explore various student-led classes at the University.
However, this tutorial is meant for anyone to use ~
You - the person who browses the internet and consumes information in the way the info-providers present it
Website hosts - the entities that organize information, specify how it should look in the best way that makes sense
to them, and deliver the website content to users
As website hosts determine how information is presented, we as consumers may not always find the information we want in a quick manner, be faced with difficult-to-navigate layouts, find unwanted elements..., and so on.
However, with a little bit of JavaScript, we will find that we can customize the way websites present themselves, enabling us to levels of customization that benefit ourselves and our purposes ~
For instance, I didn't like seeing "likes" on social media because I noticed that I was unintentionally skipping past posts with "less" activity. As I didn't think that my viewing experience was fair and needlessely based on what other people thought instead of me making my own opinion, I built an app that hides the likes. Here is a demo using Instagram:
| Without browser modifications | After browser modifications |
|---|---|
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Directly inside your browser, via a Chrome extension
Anytime you're on the website the script was written for, anytime a particular event triggers the script (as you configured)...if you can find a way to trigger the script when you want it to run, that's when it runs :)
Now that you are armed with some knowledge to manipulate the way the internet presents information, you are now capable
of solving the annoyances and nuances you were once at the mercy of -- for instance, if you feel that your favorite social networking site has some excessive or annoying features, you can cut it all out eassyyyyyyyy. If you want a dark theme on that
site you visit a lot but is way too bright at night, you can add your own dark theme eassyyyyy.
If you want to prank your friends with random scripts that change every picture on the websites they visit to dogs/cats/anime, EEAAAASSSSYYYYYYYYYYYYY.
How?
* Sources for the images: screenshots by David Wang (davidw1339) and Vivek Bhookya (mrvivacious)