MySpace DOM?

Question

I've been given the task of doing some work customizing an artist's space in MySpace. It seems that you sort of hack the HTML you want into your edit profile page (which has several empty boxes). The MySpace page, it seems, is already HTML so you can only hack into that. Suggested "tweaks" include incomplete HTML code (e.g., a <DIV> tag without a </DIV> tag to supress certain sections) and stylesheet pieces that you can "place anywhere" (meaning somewhere on your edit profile page). And the best one is that sites that offer layouts say, "Layout Code - Copy and Paste the code at the bottom of your 'I'd Like to Meet' Section!"

This cannot possibly be this lame, can it?

Is there any coherent guide to customizing MySpace pages for programmers/HTML designers? Is there a coherent DOM (including things like .contactTable etc.)? Could it be that all the tweaks are just hacks people have figured out from looking at the generated HTML?

Thanks!

Answer 1

This shouldn't be too hard if you whip out Firebug and do a bunch of "Inspect > click on page > edit CSS in Firebug's editor" work to see what you can learn about the structure of the page. Then mock it up to roughly how you want it and note down which elements and which styles need work and figure out how to get that set up in the profile editor.

Try approaching this from the point of view of a challenge. On the upside, MySpace allows you access to the DOM so you can screw with all sorts of things. On the downside, their choice of HTML composition is somewhat arguable.

Answer 2

You hit the nail on the head with your final question. The MySpace DOM is a disgusting set of nearly-infinitely nested tables. Normally, people edit the page by finding those sites that let you "cut and paste" and use their generated CSS since they've already done the hard work for isolating the proper elements.

Good luck... unfortunately, you are really going to need it. =/