Imagine controlling Apple iTunes from inside Microsoft Word without having to switch applications. That could be possible, according to researchers at the University of Washington who are working on a project that could essentially make any proprietary software open source. “Microsoft and Apple aren't going to open up all their stuff. But they all create programs that put pixels on the screen. And if we can modify those pixels, then we can change the programs' apparent behavior,” said James Fogarty, a University of Washington assistant professor of computer science and engineering. Almost everything seen on a display is made of prefabricated blocks of code, and the tool, called Prefab, looks for those blocks as often as 20 times per second and alters their behavior. Fogarty likened the idea to HTML. A standard Web page can display a map from Google, an embedded YouTube video and a constantly updating RSS feed all at the same time, but achieving something similar with native PC programs is hard to do. Prefab doesn't actually reveal or manipulate the source code for programs, since it can't see it in proprietary software. It can only manipulate and combine what's visible on the computer screen. “Even if it's in a menu six layers down, if your eyes can see it, so can Prefab,” Fogarty said. He plans to show the software on April 14 in Atlanta at the Computer Human Interface conference. One of the demonstrations will use Adobe Photoshop and involves creating multiple previews of a single image file. In the background, Prefab moves the controls to adjust color and contrast and so on, captures the resulting images and displays them all on a single screen. That could save time when editing images by displaying a range of possible results to users.
