Webstrates: Shareable Dynamic Media

Most software is brittle or hard to change: end-users are lim ited to sets of pre-determined lists of preferences (Page 1)

even trained developers are at the mercy of application developers to provide hooks for adding or changing functionality (Page 1)

Malleability: (Page 1)

Each webstrate is a shared collaborative object: changes to the webstrate’s DOM, as well as changes to its embedded JavaScript code and CSS styles, are trans parently made persistent on the server and synchronized with all clients sharing that webstrate, using Operational Transfor mations (Page 2)

Substrates are software artifacts that embody content, computation and interaction, effectively blurring the distinction between docu ments and applications (Page 2)

Shareability: (Page 2)

Distributability: (Page 2)

one substrate can give meaning and structure to another (Page 2)

Webstrates makes it possible to create editors similar to Hypercard, with two important additional capabilities: native support for collabo ration and tailorability of the authoring environment based on individual preferences (Page 3)

the web is a universal distributed environ ment, a de facto standard that runs on all platforms (Page 3)

While MVC frameworks require application developers to manage the logic of updating the model when editing the view and updating the view as the model changes Webstrates provides a dynamic medium that is inherentl shared, without any explicit programming (Page 3)

create an infrastructure where tools and documents can interoperate without prior knowledge, similar to Recombinant Computing [7] (Page 3)

Shared Substance [9] uses a shared data model to which clients can dynamically attach behavior, including via instruments (Page 4)

The state of a web page that is not represented in the DOM is not shared by Webstrates (Page 4)

an escape mechanism to affect the presentation or behavior of a webstrate locally (Page 4)

Transclusion is realized using the iframe element, which embeds a webpage and the Webstrates client inside another webpage (Page 4)

run-time collaborative tinkering is a key feature of mal leable software and shareable dynamic media (Page 6)

Synchronization between clients and the persistence of the state are completely trans parent (Page 7)

wanting to share infor mation that is not represented in the DOM or not wanting to share information that is in the DOM (Page 8)

the medium is the model any change to the content of a page is shared among clients and stored in the server (Page 8)

fundamental tenet of Webstrates: a webstrate shares the DOM, the whole DOM and nothing but the DOM. (Page 8)

The pattern we use most often is a container webstrate that contains the custom elements (here, the tools) and also transcludes the webstrate to be customized (here, the content) (Page 8)

use of instruments to separate content from the tools used to edit it (Page 8)

A user interface software tool should have a low threshold —be easy to learn—and a high ceiling—support advanced users (Page 9)

the ceiling of Webstrates is that of the web, with the ability to distribute and synchronize content in real time (Page 9)

it is the same code that one would write to create a single-user to-do list without persistence (Page 9)

reduced viscosity through flexibility (Page 9)

Webstrates achieves expressive leverage by making real-time sharing a fundamental feature of the medi um rather than requiring specialized frameworks as in cur rent web applications (Page 9)