Changing a webpage to tell a story is not for the faint of heart. I tried out the X-Ray Goggles recommended for the assignment, and could not get it to work (not sure if it was a problem with the program, or if I was just fundamentally misunderstanding something). So then I tried Firebug. And the initial site that I wanted to hack (The Official Google Blog) seems to have been designed to prevent exactly this sort of thing. So I switched to CNN.com. And the code was overwhelming. The recommendation to choose a simple site is very wise.

But I decided to go with it anyway. I downloaded the homepage (File -> Save Page As in Firefox), chucked the folder of extras, and started wiping out all of the excess code in Dreamweaver. Although this method does require expensive proprietary software, it was soooo nice to be able to have a dual-view of the source code and the page, and just click on an item on the page, selecting the code so that I could easily delete it. It also made changing the text really easy, and to replace the images I just had to paste URLs into a box. I did, however, keep one image. Can you guess which one?

So what is the narrative of the web story? Well… In the fall of 2012, a new virus emerged. A feline virus. The Lolspeak Virus.

To view the full page, complete with links that I didn’t bother changing so they will take you to surprise CNN articles (the mystery is part of the fun!), you can access it here. Dropbox shows the source code, so you need to download the file and then open it in a browser to view the page.