playhtml --- interactive, collaborative html elements (multiplayer websites!)

[loren]

i've been getting more and more interested in making multiplayer websites, but a big hurdle for me is understanding how any of the actual multiplayer parts work, like how the data is stored and transferred between players. i think websockets are (sometimes?) involved but every "beginner" guide i read assumes that i have way more knowledge than i do, so i never end up learning much... anyway! i found out about another way to add simple multiplayer elements to a site, without having to figure out out all the technical details myself.

playhtml 

playhtml aims to provides infrastructure for designing communal experiences that make the web feel alive. From shared fingerprints on a letter to live reactions to live confetti with every click, I think we can reimagine the shape of websites and how we can interact with each other on them. I hope this becomes a foundation for making diverse open forms of "social media."

Most of the elements on this page are live examples! Trying clicking, dragging, and playing around with them. If anyone else is on the site, you'll see their cursors and how they're playing with the elements too.

to use it, you just have to add some extra attributes to the elements that you want to be interactive, and include a script at the end of the page. it handles all of the backend stuff! some of the examples are a draggable fridge poetry page and one where visitors can add stripes of color to the background.

what do you think? i'm not sure what i'd like to do with it yet, but i'm excited to play around!

[Melooon]

I had a nice call with Spencer a few months ago to discuss the relationship of web infrastructure and art  A bit of an aside, but its quite shocking when you realise then entire scene of people making cool projects like this prob could not fill a restaurant.

Anyway, I have opinions about this topic since I've worked on similar projects too and I've run into a lot of the key questions that this project also faces.. mainly.. once you overcome the bounds of being able to create multiplayer interactions, your suddenly faced with the daunting reality that we don't have any mental constructs or clear ideas about what multiplayer interactions in a web space should actually be.

What does it mean to be multiplayer? Is movement alone a multiplayer experience? Is seeing someone's mouse like seeing into their brain? If you see the reactions of another persons actions, but you don't know, or see the person - what is that experience? Is it a haunting? Is it like plato's shadow experience of the world? Are we like alternate laws of physics colliding with each other? Or is it something else entirely?

Thats all quite deep for a fun html toy I know; but the thing is that it needs to be; interaction is powerful and its effect on people should not be underestimated. I would like to find answers to these questions!

[MediocreMetastasis]

That's pretty cool. Allowing to change a variable globally without having to create a backend database makes it very beginner friendly allows you to learn how to transfer dynamic data between clients.
If your site runs on Node.js. Maybe you can implement it into the everyone site @Melooon .