Hacking MySpace

A lot of customizing your Myspace profile can now be done quickly and easily by using the new Myspace profile editor. There are a number of pre-made themes that you can choose from but it also gives you the ability to change these themes to make them more personal, or even create one from scratch.

In this post I plan to have a look at the editor and compare it to hand coding. I am a person who hasn’t created a default profile in years (I like div layouts much better), so this will be a new experience and my view might be a little bias towards hand coding as I am a programmer by profession, but I will try and be open minded about this editor as much as I can.

The Theme Library

Myspace’s pre-made theme library hasn’t got that many themes (at the time this post was created there are only 50 themes to choose from) but the majority of the themes that are available are very high quality and for anyone who isn’t very good with coding everything and/or just wants a quick profile then there is a great selection to choose from.

Using these pre-made themes instead of any themes you find on a Myspace resource site is much safer as you know they will work properly and you know that the background image will stay there for as long as you keep the layout up (because they are hosted by Myspace for this specific purpose). Although Myspace resource sites have a much wider selection and are more likely to have one that you absolutely love.

A nice addition that Myspace could add is the ability to add your own theme to the library for anyone else to use (something like Bebo does). Even if they moderate it and only allow the best of the best into the library it would still be a great addition for them. I’m not sure if they plan to do this in the future (they keep a lot of their new additions quiet until they happen), but it would be good.

Editing a Theme

Now lets move onto the interesting part, actually editing your own profile to get it exactly how you want.

The editor gives you a live preview of what your "tweaks" will actually do to the layout, this is great as you don’t have to keep refreshing the page after saving your layout to see if the code worked or not.

The editor gives you basic controls over your layout, it doesn’t allow you to hide anything, make a "slim" profile or do a number of more advanced editing, but it works well for the basics. One big advantage to it is that it easily allows you to edit/style the new navigation bar to suit your layout, it gives more control than hand coding does (it allows you to edit the drop down menus in the navbar, which we can’t do whilst hand coding due to some Myspace filters). It gives you the option to edit or style your:

• Background
• Modules
• Navigation Bar
• Profile Info
• Contact Table
• URL
• Interests
• Details
• Schools
• Networking
• Companies
• Status Message
• Latest Blog Entry
• Blurbs
• Top Friends Space
• Friends and Comments
• Applications
• Images
• Text
• Links

Judgement

Pros

1. It is quick and much easier to use for non-coders.
2. You can edit the drop down menus on the navigation bar.
3. It has a good selection of reliable pre-made layouts.
4. Live preview before you save any changes.
5. You can style everything individually.

Cons

1. Hand coding gives greater control over everything.
2. You cannot hide parts of your profile (e.g. top friends or comments).
3. You cannot make more advanced "tweaks" with it.
4. You cannot make a div layout.

Overall

I know at the start of this post I said I would probably have a bias view towards hand coding, but I actually really like this editor. Although it’s nothing compared to what you can do with advanced editing (e.g. a div layout), it’s great for minor changes and it is so easy to use that anyone is able to edit their profile to an extent, even if they don’t know how to code.

There are a number of changes and improvements I can think of that Myspace could make to this tool, but as it is still in it’s beta testing phase I am sure they will be making improvements to it in the very near future.

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