Webstrates: Shareable dynamic media

We revisit Alan Kay?s early vision of dynamic media thatblurs the distinction between documents and applications.We introduce shareable dynamic media that are malleable byusers, who may appropriate them in idiosyncratic ways;shareable among users, who collaborate on multiple aspectsof the media; and distributable across diverse devices and platforms. We present Webstrates, an environment for exploring shareable dynamic media. Webstrates augmentweb technology with real-time sharing. They turn web pagesinto substrates, i.e. software entities that act as applicationsor documents depending upon use. We illustrate Webstrates with two implemented case studies: users collaborativelyauthor an article with functionally and visually different editors that they can personalize and extend at run-time; andthey orchestrate its presentation and audience participationwith multiple devices. We demonstrate the simplicity andgenerative power of Webstrates with three additional prototypes and evaluate it from a systems perspective.