Tomodo - reskinning websites as-a-service | Hacker News Reader

Tomodo - reskinning websites as-a-service

tomodo.com

56 pointswodow24 comments

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I have some security concerns.

Consider the HN mod. You can try to log in there... http://hnews.tomodo.me/newslogin?whence=news

That form does post but not to HN.

You are right, it posts to the proxy, not to news.ycombinator.com but this is how it works, it's a proxy.

This reply was posted using the HN mod, so you can see the proxy then posts to HN server.

This is without doubt a reason for concern.

To be fair to them, however, the security of this platform is comparable [1] to that of many users who are willing to download (and update) arbitrary Greasemonkey scripts and browser plugins to achieve the same thing without ever a glance at the source.

For those of us who might perform such an inspection there is, of course, a difference.

Their comment (from their FAQ page) is:

> Can I trust modified sites with my private information? What about my logins and passwords?

> We care about, and do a great deal to ensure our users’ privacy and security. You can trust our service in the same way you trust your emails with Gmail or files with Dropbox. Trust is at the essence of our platform.

> If you write a Mod yourself, you can be 100% certain it is secured and your data is protected.

> We constantly review Mods that have been created to make sure they are safe to use. If we have even the slightest doubt, the Mod is immediately suspended. In addition, in case of reported abuse, the Mod in question is immediately removed.

[1]: With rather some counterpoints and nuances of course, from lack of SSL cert identity (hell they don't even have HTTPS) to potential compromise of Tomodo's servers at any time.

Edit: Also, supposedly, code sharing and review features are on the way - with the caveat of still having to place some trust in Tomodo, this might allow for more transparency. Similarly, given the nature of the mods, it might even be possible to throw up one's own self-hosted server/service to use Tomodo mods. Should be fun to find out. :)

Discovered via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6172027

This is a nice idea. But it has some flaws.

I can't open links on this site via middle click as a new tab, because the links aint links, they are divs. Why? Totally annoying.

How is the selection of the mods on the frontpage made? I tried two, both were a bit strange. Imdb with rottentomatoes has strange layout issues, the tomato-icon is not aligned at all (on my machine). [1]

xkcd with swipe greets with a black overlay instead of doing the UI right and next is in the wrong direction... though the animation itself works nicely. [2]

On both of these, the big banner at the bottom is highly irritating. Yes, it can be collapsed, but normally if I encounter such a thing I leave the site immediately. The banner should be collapsed by default.

Below was mentioned FB is used as a comment-system, which would explain why it doesn't load for me (Disconnect installed). That is indeed a nogo.

And especially if the business model involves adding ads to the original page i highly doubt that will survive the copyright lawsuits...

Addition: The Terms of Use are very questionable, combined with the privacy policy it says that the user would be made responsible for the copyright violation and the private information of the user would be shared in that case.

[1] http://www.rottenimdb.tomodo.me/title/tt1931533/

[2] http://xkcd.tomodo.me/

I'm as conflicted about copyright as the next wannabe, but this FAQ entry is either incredibly optimistic or incredibly naive:

> What about copyrights and terms of use? > Since websites have the ability to opt-out or ask to have specific Mods suspended, we are safe here. In general, website owners should be kept happy if you want your Mod to really thrive and be used by many.

( http://tomodo.com/#faq )

The scenario I am thinking of is, of course: skin site, add adverts, don't tell the site owner. They notice n weeks later. Do they just block you (robots.txt-style or explicitly) or do they also sue for lost revenue?

Good guess! We are about to release tomodo.txt sometime next week.

I hope you'll provide the option to exclude Tomodo from people's robots.txt so that those on relatively rigid platforms [1] have a straightforward and standardised way to opt out (rather than asking another file of people)?

[1]: hint: not me :P

Is it a breach of copyright to open a site in an iframe? What about using greasemonkey or adblock on a site, would that be copyright infringement?

You're not publishing the site to anyone else in those cases (well, depends what you're doing with the iframe).

Given the fact you can modify and add your own content, it does become a grey area. If it was simply re-skinning via CSS and JS, it wouldn't be nearly as alarming.

Pretty fun. Made a layered HN concept with comments on right. Not very functional, but you get the idea.

http://ycombinator-tmp2669.tomodo.me/ (click on a story)

I really liked http://newsycombinator.tomodo.me with the favicons posted by citricsquid (see below).

How does this differ from a browser addon like GreaseMonkey that adds custom Javascript on page load? This seems like the same idea, only using custom (*.tomodo.me) urls and with Javascript pulled from a third-party server rather than my local machine?

Exactly - I use Stylish + Userstyles. I cannot see myself using Tomodo.

It is a lot like a server-side user script but it runs on any platform including all mobile devices and without installing anything. Anyone can use this. On the other hand, try sending your grandma a user script, see what happens.

Same idea, except with this product you can share your modification across machines and users without making everybody install your plugins on their client.

I use Stylish and Grease Monkey to "fix" my favorite sites. Sometimes I find browser extensions that do that. I don't need to settle for less when I can make it how I like it.

What is it? The page contains no information (browsing on a phone).

You aren't kidding, their mobile site isn't good. The service exists as a proxy between the user and the destination website that loads modifications (javascript, css) and applies them to site. A server side version of userscripts is a reasonable way to explain it, here's an example of adding favicons before submissions on hn: http://newsycombinator.tomodo.me/

Here's their site with the mobile stylesheet disabled (how meta!): http://tomodomobile.tomodo.me/

Interesting: it include the ability to include jQuery (1.72) and Bootstrap (2.0.4). Why the old versions? (Looks like I can add my own newer versions, but still...)

Commenting on designs requires Facebook...

Mobile site is useless.

nice :-)

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