Why do people reffer mods as hacks...?
 

On this board, why do people reffer mods as hacks and skins as styles? Hacks and styles are very odd names while mods and skins are better and easier to call out the words. :D

Thats exactly what I thought when I got here as well! :) I had always been used to calling them mods and skins....

Same here. I even used to call mods and skins while I was using IPB in the old days.

Because they are hacks and styles?

Why do some people refer to styles as skins and hacks as mods, skins and mods are very strange names .......

you say tomato, i say tomatoe, you say potatoe, i say potato....

That is what everyone thinks when they vosot for the first time. :D

It is just our litle secret language to impress new members. :D

lmao

A Mod (short for modification) could be just anything - if I replace the engine of my car with a flux compensator this is a modification, but surely not a Hack.
Now where does the word Hack (in terms of computer programming) originally come from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_(technology_slang)
Therefore Hack is, technically speaking, the correct word.

A Style defines the visual appearance of smth., for example every human being has it's own Style in regards of clothing, etc.
Regarding websites, this can be done with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which was first introduced in 1994.
AFAIK, the term Skin was used at first for customizing the look and feel/apearance of Software by WinAMP in the late 1990s.
A Skin consists of Graphics (and layout definitions, etc.), while a (vBulletin) Style does not necessarily have to come with new images.
Therefore hte Term Style is correct too :)

good definitions Kirby and that's why I love Wikipedia (also Answers.com)

sorry to bring this back from the dead...

but I was thinking the same thing (of course, I'm new to vBulletin)

When I think of a mod, I'm thinking of a self contained modular addon to vBulletin. Hack makes me think of a hack to the core code of vBulletin. But maybe there's a lot of overlap here... as a vBulletin newbie, it sure feels like it isn't very modular as almost every feature I've added required me to hack the core vbulletin code. As an enterprise forum solution, you would think that it would have a robust enough API so that it would be rare to require added fields to a core vBulletin database table, or changes to the core php files... sure would make upgrading easier.