Textbooks By Nobody In Particular Screensaver
The Textbooks By Nobody In Particular screensaver shows live edits to Wikibooks, key-less from the MediaWiki API. A textbook is a far larger unit of work than an article, so the edits cluster: rather than spreading across the project, they land repeatedly on the handful of books someone is currently pushing through, a chapter at a time. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
Live preview
Press ESC to leave fullscreen. Settings are saved in your browser only.
How the Textbooks By Nobody In Particular screensaver works
The saver reads the source described above and draws it on a canvas — no account, no tracking.
Live edits to Wikibooks, key-less from the MediaWiki API. A textbook is a far larger unit of work than an article, so the edits cluster: rather than spreading across the project, they land repeatedly on the handful of books someone is currently pushing through, a chapter at a time.
It refreshes on a schedule, so what you see stays current.
Colours can be changed in settings; nothing is stored beyond your own browser.
What Wikibooks is trying to be
Wikibooks is a Wikimedia project for collaboratively writing open-content textbooks, and anyone can edit it. It went online on 10 July 2003. Where Wikipedia describes a topic neutrally, a Wikibook teaches it, with chapters, exercises and a guided order. Its shelves also include Wikijunior, aimed at children, and a Cookbook of recipes and culinary topics.
Because books are long and made of many chapters, the recent-changes stream looks different from other wikis. Chapters are commonly stored as sub-pages, so page names often take the form of a book title, a slash and a chapter name. Edits show up as byte additions when an author drafts text or as cleanup removals, and bots and template changes also appear in the stream.
The stream tells you where people are working, not whether a book is good. Many books are incomplete, and quality varies from carefully reviewed to barely started. Content is released under open licences (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike and the GNU Free Documentation License), so finished books can be copied and reused. Editing activity is modest compared with larger Wikimedia sites, so a quiet moment is normal.
A worked example
Live edits to Wikibooks, key-less from the MediaWiki API. A textbook is a far larger unit of work than an article, so the edits cluster: rather than spreading across the project, they land repeatedly on the handful of books someone is currently pushing through, a chapter at a time.
Settings & tips
- Accent and Background recolour the display.
- Every value on screen comes from the live source — nothing is simulated.
- Press ESC to leave fullscreen.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this real data?
- Yes — it comes from the source named on this page and is refreshed on a schedule.
- Is a key needed?
- No. This source is fully key-less.
- Is it free?
- Yes, and it runs entirely in your browser.
- How is Wikibooks different from Wikipedia?
- Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia describing topics, while Wikibooks hosts instructional books meant to teach a subject step by step.
- Why do page titles contain slashes?
- Book chapters are commonly stored as sub-pages of the main book page, so titles take the form of book name, a slash and a chapter name.
- Are Wikibooks reliable study material?
- Quality varies by book. Some are thoroughly developed, while others are incomplete, so check the history and sources for any book you rely on.