Main Page
Introduction
Our World of Text (OWOT or OWoT) is a website that lets users to type text anywhere in a grid. Users can choose the color of their text and visit other pages known as "worlds." Upon visiting the website, all users start off on the main page and can visit other worlds by appending the name of the world to the end of the URL after a slash, or by clicking a link in the Center Console or anywhere else on the main page. OWOT first launched on June 8, 2010 by the developer and creator of Your World of Text.[1] It was created as an alternative to Your World of Text that allows unrestricted scripting. In early August of 2015, it was announced that OWOT would shut down on August 20th due to funding issues. Weeks after its original shutdown, control of the domain was handed to InfraRaven in order to start a revival of OWOT. The revival was based off the heavily modified YWOT source code from 2010 and featured a new menu design and a loading screen. In 2016, a new version of OWOT was started which gave users the ability to change the size of their text and globally chat to users anywhere on the world. It featured a sidebar menu to the left which included options such as text color, text size, and the chat. This version was developed in parallel under the "beta" subdomain. After a series of presumed scripting attacks, the developers lost interest in developing the new version. Subsequently, the revival would shut down in late 2016 after a botched attempt at creating a new client. On October 8, 2017, a new version of OWOT launched. The website backend was created from ground-up in Node.js while the frontend used a modified copy of the Your World of Text client in its first few months. Our World of Text is currently maintained by a hobbyist computer programmer going by the online alias of FP.
Functionality
A page on Our World of Text is made up of character cells which are lined up to a grid. In order to add text to a page, a user must click anywhere on the page that isn't protected to bring the text cursor to that position. Once the cursor is in focus, the user can add text by simply typing as if it were any other ordinary text editor. Because OWOT is a multiplayer website, other users can see changes added by another user as they're happening. What makes sites like Our World of Text special is that it's possible to click and drag the page to move to a different location. While an OWOT world is theoretically supposed to be infinitely large, there is an upper limit imposed due to the integer limits within JavaScript. A world is divided into chunks 16 cells wide and 8 cells tall, called a tile. Each cell can store only one grapheme cluster, allowing for the addition of Zalgo text since it makes use of combining characters. Do note, however, that OWOT's implementation of grapheme clustering is relatively limited and only covers Emoji characters and combining characters.