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Braschi-Quarenghi

Benedictine and Franciscan Monks: Forgotten Inventors

   Usually, when we think of religious orders, these things come to mind: a cloister, an abbey, a library, prayer in solitude, detachment from the world… All this in the cradle of a period defined as "dark" by historiography up to Romanticism: the Middle Ages . In this period the monks - especially the Benedictines of the various orders - were the custodians of Judeo-Christian but also classical culture, since thanks to their patient and meticulous transcriptions as scribes we have received almost all of the Greek and Latin works which we study today. Today we are grateful to them first of all for this.   However, many do not know that many products - material and immaterial - that we consume and use every day, come from monks who, using their ingenuity nourished by a profound spirituality, invented them due to practical necessities.    Personally, I find it amazing!    Let's begin…   The heavy plow   Plows were a primary agri...

Hacking the Web: Editing Any Webpage Like a Word Document


Introduction

If you surf the Web quite a bit, you probably already know that’s “impossible” to edit any content you’re reading, if not projected from the beginning to do so. In this article, I will teach you a way you can “escape” this block and edit, correct, and customise any webpage text to your liking.
Disclaimer: editing webpages in this way you’re not changing the content for everyone, you’re temporarily making a change locally that will vanish just by reloading the page (I will also show the easiest way to save it). Anyway, an improper use of this technique could be exploited to edit newspaper articles and share an image of fake news. We do not assume any responsibility for any of the pages you edit.

What’s required?

The tools required are:
  • a computer with an internet connection
  • Google Chrome installed (other browsers share the same basis but the procedure can vary a bit)
  • the target webpage (ex. an article, an Amazon product, etc.)

Let’s start

Open the webpage you wish to edit (we’ll use an Amazon product as example) and open DevTools Console with Ctrl + Shift + J on Windows and Linux, Cmd + Option + J on a Mac. This will spawn a textbox on the right side of the webpage. On this textbox, type exactly the following command: document.body.contentEditable = true


Now, close the DevTools Console by pressing again Ctrl + Shift + J or Cmd + Option + J and click on the text you want to edit. You’ll immediately see that a text cursor has appeared, which means you can now edit the text to your liking!


Advanced editing

Font variants

Other than simply editing the text you can also change the font variant (ex. bold) by pressing the following (standard) key combinations:
  • bold: Ctrl/Cmd + B
  • italics: Ctrl/Cmd + I
  • underlined: Ctrl/Cmd + U

Editing clickable items

If you want to edit also clickable items (as buttons), you should not click them as their default action will fire (ex. page change) possibly making you lose the entire work.

As a workaround, you should focus on the text which is nearest the button, then use the keyboard arrows to navigate. As soon as you see the text cursor, stop moving and start modifying the text inside the button. Make sure not to press the delete button at the beginning of the text, or you could destroy the button. Anyway, if this happens, try pressing Ctrl + Z or Cmd + Z once to try restoring the button. If unsuccessful, the only solution is to reload the page, losing all the work done till now.


End editing

After you end up editing the content, make sure to follow the following steps to prevent subsequent actions.

Re-open the DevTools Console by pressing Ctrl + Shift + J or Cmd + Option + J and type the following text: document.body.contentEditable = false


Now close the console by pressing the same above shortcut and... done! You just edited the page to your liking!

Here’s my result:

Additional step: screenshot

Because the changes you made are temporary and will be lost after a page reload if you want to keep the work done, you can save a PDF by pressing Ctrl/Cmd + P and choosing “Save to PDF” as “destination”.


Conclusion

Why did I show you that? First of all, it’s fun! You can create “fake” pages to prank your friends or create a meme.

Also, can be useful if your original scope was to print the article, but editing a piece without opening a PDF editor, which usually isn’t free.


Today's blogger

Hi, I'm Giorgio Bellisario, a Liceo Scientifico student. My passion revolves around tech and everything computer-related. Coding is my favorite hobby, and I primarily focus on web development, crafting websites from scratch. If you're intrigued by all things tech and ethical "hacking", you've come to the right place.

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Benedictine and Franciscan Monks: Forgotten Inventors

   Usually, when we think of religious orders, these things come to mind: a cloister, an abbey, a library, prayer in solitude, detachment from the world… All this in the cradle of a period defined as "dark" by historiography up to Romanticism: the Middle Ages . In this period the monks - especially the Benedictines of the various orders - were the custodians of Judeo-Christian but also classical culture, since thanks to their patient and meticulous transcriptions as scribes we have received almost all of the Greek and Latin works which we study today. Today we are grateful to them first of all for this.   However, many do not know that many products - material and immaterial - that we consume and use every day, come from monks who, using their ingenuity nourished by a profound spirituality, invented them due to practical necessities.    Personally, I find it amazing!    Let's begin…   The heavy plow   Plows were a primary agri...

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