Comments on: If your eye offends you...

If your eye offends you...

Iridic — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:09:16 -0800

It's not too hard to create an eye-explodingly ugly site on MySpace. It's rather more difficult to elicit beauty (or at least good taste) from the MySpace beast. But coder Mike Davidson has succeeded. You can find out he did it--and how to do it yourself--here.

By: Iridic

Iridic — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:10:04 -0800

(Soybuddha's page, by the way, is the distinguished winner of ZeFrank's "I Knows Me Some Ugly Myspace Showdown.")

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:14:28 -0800

dammit. until now the only clue was the "has x billion friends"

By: shownomercy

shownomercy — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:18:25 -0800

Well I'm impressed. Brown background, everything in its own little box .. so unlike the usual myspace flavour. He is truly breaking with tradition here and designing outside of the box. .... ....

By: itchylick

itchylick — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:18:49 -0800

Nice. Crashed my browser.

By: andywolf

andywolf — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:19:25 -0800

is this just an ad for the guys site? this is pretty lame.

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:20:27 -0800

That's the best that even a talented professional can do on MySpace? The layout is still abominable. I guess the whole thing really is fundamentally broken.

By: shownomercy

shownomercy — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:21:30 -0800

Seriously though, am I impressed with his papyrus style background image?

By: Budge

Budge — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:22:17 -0800

Everytime I click on a Myspace page it crashes my browser, most are unreadable and ugly. Don't they even have templates for folks to use?

By: scblackman

scblackman — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:24:17 -0800

What is a 31 year-old "CEO and co-creator ..." doing on MySpace anyway? Harumph.

By: brain_drain

brain_drain — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:24:39 -0800

What the hell is wrong with the first link? My browser crashed too.

By: sveskemus

sveskemus — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:24:44 -0800

Yeah, how is that better than the standard layout? Is this really the best anyone can do on MySpace?

By: brownpau

brownpau — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:24:58 -0800

I concede defeat.

By: troybob

troybob — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:27:28 -0800

i think it's neat...and the little tutorial page, too...not all of us are design geniuses around here, and it's cool when someone can help class up the place a bit...

By: pax digita

pax digita — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:28:17 -0800

I love how I had to refuse to run three ActiveX controls before I could make the page go away. Now if the afterimages would just stop torturing my retinas....

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:30:03 -0800

oh hey, that's the layout I use, more or less. PLEASE BE FRIENDS WITH ME

By: zennie

zennie — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:34:14 -0800

Is this really the best anyone can do on MySpace? No. This is actually pretty ordinary.

By: padraigin

padraigin — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:36:36 -0800

Huh. He's kind of hot.

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:38:25 -0800

I hate myspace with the strength of a thousand burning suns. Unusable, fugly, etcetera.

By: Firas

Firas — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:39:00 -0800

MySpace's HTML isn't given to much styling, and you can only alter the CSS, not the template. As a general rule, a lot of what 'talented professional' web designers do tends to seem 'plain'. I'm not sure how to explain it, but there you go (eg. happy cog, mezzoblue, etc. etc.)

By: muthecow

muthecow — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:43:57 -0800

jessamyn - you and Mike D were both at the Seattle Campus of the University of Washington between 1993 and 1996. Do all your fellow alumni use this layout? p.s. I like your mirror photo - the one condition of any profile.

By: taosbat

taosbat — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:45:16 -0800

Thanks, I sent both Mike Davidson links to my son. Not that it's likely to help.

By: owhydididoit

owhydididoit — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:45:34 -0800

not so fast, brownpau, all you need is MIDI Jetsons and you're a contender

By: Ekim Neems

Ekim Neems — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:46:37 -0800

Here's a better layout. And yet another.

By: Artw

Artw — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:47:02 -0800

You have to work that hard to get something that uninspired? Oh dear.

By: blucevalo

blucevalo — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:58:36 -0800

Ow. That first link gave me the most indescribable migraine.

By: smallerdemon

smallerdemon — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:06:26 -0800

Hm. Looks damn near like just a modified iWeb template from here. In fact, it looks a lot like this 13 year old kid's iWeb site. (via Metafilter Projects)

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:10:28 -0800

What? There's no way that guy is 13. I smell a fake

By: stinkycheese

stinkycheese — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:13:44 -0800

I liked soybomb's the best, myself. That was 10X as good as any three 'normal' MySpace pages put together.

By: Firas

Firas — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:16:03 -0800

Ekim Neems, that overlay idea sounds *really* interesting.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:17:31 -0800

It's also against the ToS, isn't it? Blocking the ads a big no-no round MySpace way.

By: Ogre Lawless

Ogre Lawless — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:39:35 -0800

The social phenomenon that is MySpace is one I don't fully understand, and yet, one I must fully respect. Oh Mike, you lost me at "hello". "What the hell is this damned thing?!? I dunno! Let me fix it!"

By: rsanheim

rsanheim — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:40:44 -0800

The overlay hack at 5thirtyone doesn't go over the ads, unless you change it to do so. Very clever work around.

By: Roger Dodger

Roger Dodger — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:42:59 -0800

Bonaldi, please, let's not make it about a talented thirteen year old.

By: Artw

Artw — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:43:07 -0800

So.. is the Ugly actually a part of the appeal of MySpace or something?

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:46:25 -0800

ZeFranks "I Know Me Some Ugly" song is surprisingly catchy.

By: cgc373

cgc373 — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:47:13 -0800

I thought bonaldi was making a joke, or maybe I just hoped it was a joke.

By: sciurus

sciurus — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:48:29 -0800

So.. is the Ugly actually a part of the appeal of MySpace or something? Have you seen [I mean, really looked at] average hipster style lately?

By: rsanheim

rsanheim — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:53:19 -0800

artw: actually, yes. the fact that people can change their profiles to have whatever god awful color scheme or mp3s and flash is part of the appeal. Imagine a myspace page like a teenager's bedroom - you probably don't like the decorating, posters, or music choices, and its probably messy and garish, but its _their's_. Tell a kid she can't decorate her room the way she wants or make it her's, and she probably won't wanna be there very much. This is part of the reason that sites like friendster fell away as myspace grew. Combine that with the fact that most teenagers don't know the first thing about html/css, and that myspace forces you to use hacks for layout, results in the horrible mess that most myspace pages are.

By: armoured-ant

armoured-ant — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:59:28 -0800

That's how I made mine, too!

By: xmutex

xmutex — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 12:04:26 -0800

Imagine a myspace page like a teenager's bedroom - you probably don't like the decorating, posters, or music choices, and its probably messy and garish, but its _their's_. Uh yeah but we have a bunch of 20, 30, 40 year olds on MySpace. It's kind of sad. But so it goes.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 12:09:29 -0800

Technically proficent is not the same as beautiful.

By: rsanheim

rsanheim — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 12:09:56 -0800

xmutex: yea but i would say the majority of really bad profiles is the under 25 set. give the adults a means to create better profiles (beyond grabbing JoesTemplate), and they would probably use something nicer.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 12:13:11 -0800

True mastery surpasses superficial beauty. A nove could never do this.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 12:14:24 -0800

A novice, I means.

By: Zack_Replica

Zack_Replica — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 12:17:23 -0800

Came close to crashing Firefox, but fortunately Greasemonkey came to the rescue and got rid of most of the crap, so all those bad pages all look the same: plain and simple. I liked the ZeFrank bit... I noticed that he's cut the vid so that he doesn't blink at all through the whole thing, which is a bit cleverer than a bunch of floating ducks.

By: wfc123

wfc123 — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 12:19:07 -0800

The ugly site is a fantastic find. My monitor shattered- like when Herman Munster looks into a mirror.

By: BrodieShadeTree

BrodieShadeTree — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 12:22:12 -0800

MySpace is awful and I totally do not understand it. Has that been said before? My friend who has a band swears by it though.

By: banished

banished — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 13:09:51 -0800

This one was the best I'd ever seen. Myspace eventually took it down because it hid the ads and violated their terms of service.

By: trinarian

trinarian — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 13:21:12 -0800

I tried a DIV overlay called WhiteSpace that looked awesome on my browser but like shit on everyone elses because of alignment issues. Trying to fix the code itself just made it worse. As per swearing by MySpace... it's a pretty damn useful tool for staying in contact with friends. Especially when you're 7000 miles away. For all it's ugliness, I still have 150 [real] friends who use it and check it regularly. 4/5 of my relevant email from them comes from MySpace. Throwing up a couple bulletins/event invitations to announce a party or mass event is so much easier than sitting on the phone for an hour calling everyone.

By: stenseng

stenseng — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 13:29:50 -0800

I'm pretty happy with mine, but then again, I stole much of Mike's code to do it.

By: hatchetjack

hatchetjack — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 13:31:18 -0800

This dude's Myspace is Way better.

By: nlindstrom

nlindstrom — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 13:42:40 -0800

I too hate MySpace with the strength of a thousand burning suns. And who is the idiot who is using my username for http://www.myspace.com/nlindstrom? He looks so ... vapid. Just think ... with the truly vast number of people who are happily posting all manner of personal details and pictures on the web, pretty soon researching a job candidate will become so much easier: I'll just match their resume with their MySpace profile, and decide if I want to hire them or not based on the length of their dick in a mirror reflection photo. The future is now!

By: Carbolic

Carbolic — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 13:56:04 -0800

I am almost certain bonaldi is 100% correct. I say his mother did it.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:04:04 -0800

This one was the best I'd ever seen. Myspace eventually took it down because it hid the ads and violated their terms of service. Pff. The whole thing is just an image.

By: troybob

troybob — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:08:59 -0800

i don't get the anti-myspace thing myself...i'm 39 and use it, and it's a great platform for being connected with distant family and friends...and i have friends in bands, so it's neat to see them get some increased exposure...there's not always time to email everybody, and you're not always in the mood for it, so it's cool to be able to go check out somebody's page and catch up, or update your own, at your convenience...and the structure of it makes for some consistency, and doesn't require coding--and why should it? you don't have to become a telephone operator/technician to give someone a call...why does someone not in the industry need to learn html or...ugh...design (considering that no matter how much time they put into that, there's gonna be those people with special eyes who will find something to insult about it)? ...probably just the next phase in the 'you suck because you can't design a webpage' thing, so yesteryear's cat ladies and midi lovers (those who care) can breathe a sigh of relief...but really, it's the computer guy on snl...it's joan and melissa rivers bitching about somebody's outfit...mostly, it's just really tired...

By: weretable and the undead chairs

weretable and the undead chairs — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:28:57 -0800

I hated everything about MySpace at first but I no longer do. I see the appeal even if I still hate the horrific design of the site. I hope eventually something will be done to make some nice templates available and the code will be cleaned up so that it is not the nastiest looking mess on the friggin' web. I reserved my username and eventually will make a decent looking page there. I started with the the template linked here but after seeing how different it could be made with some experimenting, I quit messing with it so I could go back later when I had more free time and see what could be done. The sheer number of people using it means that it is one of the best ways to make yourself available for old friends looking to reconnect with you, espeically those who are novice web users. That alone makes it difficult for me to hate it.

By: stenseng

stenseng — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:43:49 -0800

My only complaint about myspace is that it's coded SO poorly, and doesn't really make much of an attempt to be more than marginally standards compliant. To do anything worthwhile with it takes such a kludge, it's not even funny.

By: Artifice_Eternity

Artifice_Eternity — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:53:51 -0800

I don't get spending all that time hacking a MySpace page... seems like a lot of work for a small payoff. And if you're going to create a totally nonstandard layout, with all the usual MySpace content put in different places, you're just going to confuse people. Here's an idea: spend that time working on your own website. Like zillions of others, I used Thomas' MySpace Editor and got decent results.

By: muckster

muckster — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:31:05 -0800

There doesn't even seem to be a way to pull an RSS feed in and display it in your profile (don't even mention Flickr badges etc.) The best thing I found was a hack that generates an image, but that's less than ideal. Showing feeds from other sites would be the only way I'd keep a MySpace page up to date.

By: MikeKD

MikeKD — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:41:43 -0800

and it's cool when someone can help class up the place a bit...^ "Lipstick on a pig" isn't a powerful enough cliché....

By: scblackman

scblackman — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 04:51:57 -0800

My feelings on MySpace = this.

By: cdavidc

cdavidc — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 05:20:01 -0800

My space is the anti-christ personified online.

By: cribcage

cribcage — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 08:11:16 -0800

As long as we're bitching about MySpace... Can someone explain the "extended network" to me? I don't get it. If I'm not logged in, MySpace tells me that everyone is in my extended network — but when I am logged in, MySpace still says that everyone is in my extended network. It even says that if I view my own profile while logged in. How can I be in my own "extended" network? What the hell is the "extended network" — and if it's meaningless, why doesn't MySpace use that box for another ad?

By: hatchetjack

hatchetjack — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 09:35:11 -0800

If "Tom" is still your friend, EVERYBODY is in your extended network since EVERYBODY is Tom's friend.

By: cribcage

cribcage — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 11:03:08 -0800

He isn't. So that doesn't explain it.

By: bonaldi

bonaldi — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 11:52:38 -0800

But I bet he's the friend of one of your friends -- hence "extended" network, rather than immediate. It's poorly thought-through like everything else on MySpace

By: cribcage

cribcage — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:01:19 -0800

No, that's not it, either. I just created a dummy profile with a randomized name. I logged in, deleted Tom so that I had zero Friends, and everyone is still in my "extended network" (including my own dummy profile). Besides, it displays the same message when you're logged out — so it doesn't have anything to do with who's in your Friends.