Let me start by saying this blog post is short and boring. This is intentional because I don’t want it shared at all, I just want to give a quick progress update and explain how to use Page One Remix in its current state. That state will continue to improve before I consider the project ready to fully rock, which is why I don’t want it shared with the world yet (don’t get me wrong, it rocks, it just has some rough edges that need patching before it takes the world by storm). Also I found out earlier today that I get to pick up a U-Haul and move to a new apartment in about five hours.
Anyway I’ve just about finished mastering and mutilating hackasaurus – all changes so far have dealt with the user experience in some way. There are still a few odds and ends I need to tweak on that regard, but I want to just give the hackasaurus team major props for creating a pretty darn robust tool. It’s spectacular how much basic remix functionality is covered up front.
How to Re-re-re-remiixxx
Since I reached a point where things are now somewhat coherent I want to explain how to use this iteration of Page One Remix. First off you should point your browser to my temporary server. When you go to the site you will see a stripped down version of the current front page of the New York Times (I remove most javascript and ads).
You should quickly realize that when hovering over pieces of the page you can click on content. Do it. I dare you. Clicking opens up a modal window that allows you to edit whatever you had highlighted. The editable version is on the left, and a visual on the right. Redefine the content as much as you want, and then slap “Commit Changes” (or, if you hate what you did, hit “Cancel”). If you commit you’ll see that the changes are reflected on the page.
Sharing is built in as well, but it’s really opaque right now (this is the next thing I’ll be improving). To share you have to type “P” on your keyboard. I’ll be making that more obvious, and will likely make a few more general improvements to the UX before trying to add any fancy pants features, but for now you should at least be able to play with the service!
This is actually all you need to write your own front page – just click on what you want to change about the news, type in your own version, and share that news with your network (but don’t actually because I want to improve things first).
Here is a partially complete Page One Remix <-- see? You can say anything about Newt Gingrich and suddenly it becomes true!
P.S. — I’ve only tested this in Chrome and Firefox, so if you use fake browsers you’ll just have to wait a bit longer.