i am also planning to release at least 2 (print style, and bright bird) possibly three (maybe dark beads, or something similar) of my old earlybird wordpress themes for free download. i hope to get these up on a style switcher on my demo site within the next week or so, and will post the download then too.

Adding color, graphics, and sound to your profile page is easy and requires only a basic knowledge of HTML (the programming language used to create web pages on the Internet). Simply go to “Edit Profile” and enter the desired HTML coding where appropriate.If you do not know HTML, you can reach out and make a new friend by asking someone who has color, graphics, and/or sound on their Profile page how they did it. People on MySpace are friendly and always willing to help, so just ask! This is a great way to meet new people!

occasionally i would go back and read it just to give myself a giggle. of course myspace was never intended to be customisable but unfortunately, unlike flickr or deviantArt, it was also violently ugly. for the longest time the good ship myspace has just shuffled it’s feet nervously and muttered the above you-can-but-we-won’t-tell-you-how whilst a virtual sea of profile generators, editors and hack sites have sprung up.

but finally the time has come. ah, the inevitable bell of progress tolls even through myspace… yes, they now have… rofile.editor"an oficial profile editor!

oh my lord, i thought, finally they are embracing the user’s desire to make pretty, finally they will offer a tidy, official way for people to do it - perhaps even with valid css???

so.. um…

this is it folks…

i think i laughed out loud for a good ten minutes. especially since the first beta launch didn’t work AT ALL on anything other than IE

beta? (i chortled on firefox) beta? it’s a fucking photo!

and you can only find it through google, it’s impossible to actually find on the site itself. i realise it’s still on trial - but it’s a bit like vogon planning permission isn’t it? i mean, why bother.

they are also now offering a support page for profile cutomisation. the header text is in comic sans. need i say more?

oh yeah, and i’m pretty sure they’ve just gone to mygen or somesuch and nicked all their codes to make this shitty little effort.

my oh my oh myspace.

despite the fact that software companies have to pay to use the competing GIF format (which raises the software costs for the user) and PNG (apparantly it is pronounced “ping” ?!?) usage is free poor browser support over the years has meant that almost everyone still uses GIF’s instead.

the really upsetting part of this is that PNG’s are wildely superior in capabilities. they support gamma correction, loss-less compression, up to 48-bit color, and, here’s the rub, true alpha transparency.

GIF’s only support binary transparency, which is what causes that ugly anti-aliasing around the edges against dark backgrounds.you know, like on those animated shagging skeletons…

example:

so why aren’t we all using PNG’s all the time? most of the latest versions of the major browsers fully support alpha transparency with PNG’s and in fact many of the older versions too, except… can you tell where i’m going…


that would be internet explorer.

IE7 has finally included full alpha transparency support, however anything below does not - and since at this time only around 20% of IE users are actually using version 7 this is still a bit of a problem to say the least. why the slow adoption? i guess a lot of people have their upgrade alerts turned off or just choose not to install. as a web designer it is massively frustrating. do you settle for the GIF and deny yourself the seductive powers of the PNG or do you accept that your site will only look how it’s meant to on certain browsers?

i’ve started to use PNG’s more and more but it’s still something that niggles at me. this site for example: [link] the main feature of it (the dark ‘glass’ effect) does not work in IE6. it’s still readable, it functions but it’s not.. you know.. pretty

i really want to be an inclusive designer and be as cross-browser compatible as possible, but being quite aesthetically driven this issue really gets my hackles up. i will probably just continue to use PNG’s as long as the site will still be readable in older IE and hopefully with increased usage of IE7 it will become less of a worry.

in the meantime it’s just another reason to add to the ‘we hate internet explorer/use firefox instead’ campaign

some browser examples:

Firefox 2.0.0.1 on Mac OS X

Safari 2.0 on Mac OS X

Firefox 2.0 on Windows XP

IE7

IE6

IE5 (the last version of IE that supports mac osx)