I use the web quite a bit, and one of the things I do quite often is customize my experience on sites I frequent. Most of that customization comes via Stylish and Scriptish (the latter a fork of Grease Monkey).
Some of the things I customize are minor, like page aesthetics. Some I consider more important. Take Google Search for example. Did you know some of your search results are censored? This is thanks to laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Google is good enough to notify you when censorship has occurred.
But only if you scroll to the bottom of the search page. Which you may not do for quick, one-off searches. This is the equivalent to newspapers printing important news on page 8N which is otherwise a full page of ads.
But thanks to Stylish:
@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
@-moz-document domain("google.com") {
#mfr {
position: absolute !important;
top: -20px !important;
right: 0px !important;
width: 300px !important;
background-color: #FCC !important;
font-size: 1.2em !important;
}
}
This adds a bit of styling to the notice and throws it at the top-left of the search results.
With most software this wouldn’t be possible. Without the open web that notice (if there at all) would be permanently stuck down at the bottom. Maybe I would adopt the practice of always looking for it, but it’s doubtful.
Instead, I can remain aware of the prevalence of censored results. I can find out more.
The challenge is opening up this technology to those who don’t know CSS, JavaScript, HTML, or how to debug those technologies (as modifying the page often requires understanding it rather than simple repositioning like above). There are ways to do that, but so far they seem limited to having programmers hand ready-made solutions to novices (eg, via sharing snippets like that above).
The problem with that approach is that it limits the idea pool to those who either can implement a modification themselves or knows someone who can.