Hacking MySpace

As I looked pretty closely at the profile 1.0 editor in a previous post I thought that it would be a pretty good idea to finally have a look at the new profile 2.0 editor.

I may still make comparisons to hand coding but the main focus will be to compare it to the profile 1.0 editor (and see what if anything has been added).

Theme Library

The theme library is still there for any of you who isn’t very good at customizing your profile or just doesn’t have the time to do it yourself. It has a lot of the themes that profile 1.0 has, but I don’t think it has all of them yet (I say yet because I think that they will just be re-coding the themes to fit the new profile 2.0 and that is why they haven’t released the others yet, but I could be wrong). They are all themes that are available on profile 1.0 so even if you aren’t switching then you aren’t missing out on any themes or anything like that.

I still think that Myspace could (and should) expand this section and open it up to all the great designers that they have using their site (i.e. getting users to make themes that are then public for everyone to use, like I mentioned in the post about the profile 1.0 editor).

Change Layout

A new feature in the profile 2.0 editor is this “change layout” tab. This allows you to select a certain width of your profile (select one of either 750px, 960px or 100% — anyone who knows about coding websites will understand why these widths have been chosen, but it’s not important). This also gives you a few different layout structures for your modules to follow, so you can select one to change how your page looks.

Advanced Edit

This is basically there for anyone to edit certain sections of their profile without using a pre-made theme. It has pretty much everything that you would want to edit on there including: background color, content (text) formatting, header formatting and module formatting.

CSS

This would be the area for you to enter any custom CSS into the profile, unlike profile 1.0 where you could place it anywhere you like. It also means that you don’t need the <style> tags around the CSS.

Modules

This gives you the ability to add or remove a bunch of modules including the music player, calendar, etc, giving you a lot more control than the profile 1.0 editor.

You also have the ability to move the modules that are on your page around, e.g. you could move the about me into the left sidebar if you liked and your general interests where the about me is. Again, much more control than profile 1.0.

Overall

Overall I think it’s a pretty good editor, it’s got all the features you really need in it and a few that you might not need/want but doesn’t harm to have. Myspace are probably in the process of creating new modules or additions for your profile (although don’t hold me to that, it’s just a guess) which will hopefully make your profile even better.

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