Users Control Your Site Using CSS and Stylebot

Using a new Google Chrome extension called Stylebot, end users can change and update the style elements of any website, essentially changing the way the web appears whenever they visit the site. Although users may be happy about the tool, web developers may not be so enthusiastic.

Stylebot was one of the submissions to Google’s Summer of Code, created by student Ankit Ahuja. The tool enables users to access and modify the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) on any web page, within the Chrome browser. By selecting any element they wish to style, and change it by making a selecting from a popup menu.

Ahuja says that Stylebot isn’t just strictly for looks, and that it can be utilized by users with special needs as well. “A Stylebot user with special reading needs might change a webpage by removing images, picking new text and background colors, and even moving blocks of text around.” The question is whether developers who worked hard to create a particular style for their site will appreciate the idea that end users can change the style at will.