I had a client approach me and ask if I knew how to customize MySpace. I replied “Sure can!” thinking that it couldn’t possibly be that difficult. Oh sweet merciful Jesus was I ever wrong. Instead of elegant semantic code full of classes to hook into, MySpace is a horrible mishmash of tables, divs, and transparent spacer images. You can’t directly style any ID elements, since hash marks (#) get stripped out whenever you save profile edits.

I dug through googled pages of style templates until coming across Hacking A More Tasteful MySpace by Mike Davidson. However, this was written almost 2 years ago, and MySpace code has become even more convoluted since then. Enter Alexander Agnarson (LOOK at that MySpace, WOW!) and his update to Mike’s excellent hack.

Honestly, my initial efforts pale in comparison. I’m a neat freak though, and my goal was to make all of the content boxes line up with even widths down the column and even gaps throughout, so mission accomplished. It’s still a WIP, now that I have the alignment all sorted out I can work on the flourishes.

I have my mac RSS screensaver set to display the feed from Slashdot and came across this interesting site. FontStruct lets you create your own font online, which can then be exported as a TrueType font for use on your computer. The UI is rather clever; with many scaling options and built-in ability to create hollows, bevels, and rounded edges. Early results can look rather blocky because of it’s grid-based geometry, but given enough time and effort, someone could make some very interesting fonts.

ASCII Art has been around since 1966 in one form or another. Well, now there’s CSS Art. Román Cortés has created a portrait of Homer Simpson done entirely with CSS. Here’s an animated version (courtesy of Ned Batchelder) so that you can see how it’s done piece-by-piece. More recently, Román made a portrait of George Bush using the same technique. Very creative (and time consuming!) use of the medium. As it catches on, I’d wager that programs will be created to help automate the process, much like a rasterbator or ASCII generator.