A team of researchers from the University of Washington, USA, is working on a program that will allow «turning» any proprietary software into open source.
The verb transform applies here not in the literal sense, but rather to translate the possibility of manipulating and personalizing any program to the user’s needs. Imagine, for example, introducing buttons that allow you to control iTunes from Word, without having to jump between the windows of the two programs.
The application is called Prefab and promises to modify the user interface, even without having access to the program’s source code (which is proprietary).
«Microsoft and Apple are not going to» open «your code, but they create programs that put pixels on the screen. If we can modify these pixels, then we can modify the apparent behavior of the programs», explains the person responsible for the project, James Fogarty, quoted by PC World.
Almost everything you see on the screen is made up of «blocks» of «prefabricated» code. What this new tool does is look for these «blocks» at a frequency of 20 times per second and change their behavior, he adds.
Researchers draw a parallel with what happens with the language used on web pages, HTML, which can be seen by everyone, which means that we can add elements from one page to another – videos, maps, RSS, images or simple connections, for example, but explains that something similar is difficult to achieve with native computer programs. What they propose with their new tool is a way to mix functionalities of several programs in a single, unified interface.
On the Prefab website, a video is made available showing some of the software’s potential. The project is still under development but the main part of the work is done, said the computer professor, who has been preparing Prefab for two years together with a doctoral student in the same area, Morgan Dixon.
Researchers are now studying a way to commercially exploit the idea. In the meantime, a demonstration is scheduled for April 14 at the Computer Human Interface conference in Atlanta (USA).
