Myspace Customized Layouts Suck

I hate when people fuck up the standard layout of their Myspace profiles. That website obviously was not made for customization. If the creators wanted to allow this type of creativity, they would likely built in a customizable template structure similar to the ones behind blogger and livejournal.

When you inject CSS in weird places to reformat the page you are making a mess. If you don't watch what you are doing, your profile is likely to look like crap in non IE browsers. But if you redefine a few classes that's not the end of the world usually.

But I have to ask - why does everyone with a customized profile opts for ass-ugly dark background image, with bright, fluorescent text? Why does everyone remove the borders that nicely divide page sections into readable chunks? When you remove all the spatial formating and delineation you remove the visual clues that are supposed to help the reader focus on the content. Without those borders, everything seems to clump together into an unreadable mess.

When you put a dark, or vividly colored image in the background you once again shift the focus from text onto the background. As a rule, light background + dark text is easier to read than dark background + light text. It's just easier on the eyes.

Mousover effects are only effective when they are subtle. Font and size changes are horribly annoying as they tend to shift things over and change the layout each time you move the pointer.

And why, for all that is holly in this world, do you people put music or videos on your profile? Do you think I'm entertained by it? No! I hate these things. They slow my browser, they take forever to load and if I have more than 1 profile open at the same time I am treated to instant a cacophony of sound. Background music was a stupid idea in the 90's and it is still a stupid idea now - regardless of the technology used to play it.

If you really must have some moving shit in there put a Youtube or Google based vid - one that needs to be clicked in order to start playing. Anything that starts automatically is annoying waste of bandwidth. I'm sure your favorite song is really awesome, but why do I need to listen to it every single time I want to leave you a comment or send you a message?

Sigh... I swear that these myspace customization attempts are the modern equivalent of the blink tag, running dog gif image, frames and annoying midi tune playing in the background.

Tags: myspace, myspace customizations, web, web design, design, social networks, web annoyances, rant