MySpace is not pimpable enough
I recently signed up to the much-talked-about MySpace to see what all the hype was about. I couldn’t understand why it was so much popular than some of its rivals in the form of Xanga and MSN Spaces, among others. I was expecting a site with plenty of wow-factor, but most of all, flexibility to be able to truly make your profile “your own”. Once I’d signed up, however, I was struck by the complete opposite.
MySpace is not pimpable enough
It’s funny how a site which prides itself on its members can run itself while being so inflexible. The number of customisation options are surprisingly little. All the obligatory “about me”, “favourite books” and “like to meet” sections are there for you to fill out some details, but there are no features for customising the actual page layout and style built-in.
Third-party styling
It’s due to this lack of options that websites such as MyPimpSpace have started appearing. The people behind these sites seem to have spent untold hours trying to get the MySpace system to work to their advantage. Numerous tricks, such as embedding CSS and sounds right into the page through the “about me” box have popped up.
Now, you may say, this is the most flexibility you can get - there’s nothing more flexible than embedding CSS directly. Normally, I would agree with this assertion, but this time, I have no options but to break that dream.
The code is dirty, DIRTY I TELL YOU!
As well as bringing great potential, CSS also brings risks for the people who run MySpace. If you allow styles to be embedded willy-nilly, then you run the risk of people using them to hide things like ads and banners which are crucial for MySpace’s income.
It seems due to this that MySpace has reverted to passing all embedded content through a filter in order to make sure that everything is OK. Now, there’s no problem with this except the fact that rather than actually removing offending content, the filter simply replaces it with an empty declaration of unknown origin, mostly .r{};. I am guessing that the r stands for “removed”. It also replaces @import with .., thereby disabling all external stylesheets.
The above may seem reasonable in order to protect some of MySpace’s content, but realistically, it sometimes goes a bit too far. A better idea would be to provide a dedicated “styles” box where all styles can be entered without using boxes intended for other content such as “about me”. Then, disable styles in all other boxes. All that needs to be done now is to filter the code in the “styles” box, actually removing all offending code such as @import or display:none;. However, allowing the hash sign (#) will not cause any trouble and will make it easier to author styles that target specific sections of the page (it’s currently not allowed, which also disallows targeting any IDs on the page).
It’s all in the code
The MySpace source code itself is not valid HTML. This in itself is a hindrance to styling. Making it valid will help tremendously with this, as well as making pages potentially much smaller.
Finally, the pages need much more modularity and hooks which can be used for more fine-grained styling. For example, using ID and class on all important sections and modules will make it much easier to target just those sections, rather than using ugly rules like table table table table td in order to get control.
It can be so much better
MySpace is a great site to meet people and get to know them as well as their likes, dislikes and taste (according to how they style their profile!) However, it is not nearly extensible enough, and there is much room for improvement in the flexibility that is offered to their members. Some minor tweaks and changes will make it even better.