Ask HN: Ideas for Casual DOM Manipulation

by toinebegon 7/4/2023, 4:58 PMwith 2 comments

Hi HN,

I'm working on a short talk I will be doing soon. I want to desmonstrate to a non-coder public that when you access a webpage, you actually download a some data that you can interract with and modify. This is pratices I do without thinking but I see people don't have that knowledge. I will show small js one liners, css rules or gui interaction with the standard dev tools. I will also talk about plugins, [tamper/violent/fire]monkey, ublock, user stylesheet...

For now I have the following :

- delete paywall or modals from the dom with the inspect tool (you can do the same in Ublock also).

- change the input type from password to text to see a recorded password

- change color from the devtools then apply them with user stylesheet (using a plugin)

- identify resources (sound, image) from the network pannel and download them in your user folder

- find image links by inspecting stylesheet to get background images

- modify url arguments (pagination querystring, explore a site by it's url)

- show several privacy and adblocking plugins.

Do you have any ideas in the same vein I could use to enrich the presentation ?

by rudasnon 7/4/2023, 6:18 PM

Great ideas! What about going to a very well known site, eg NYT, and changing some text on the front page to mention your self, or the presentation and take a screen shot of that?

"this presentation is so good the NYT is talking about it!"