My New MySpace Layout, Blades... of grass Options

[--DANNY--]

myspace.com/DannyDahl


I used the same look for the layout that I used for my portfolio.

Let me know what you think.

[arweneveallen]

Thats a really great layout. The photo is so versitile, neutral, modern, and organic! I like the way on the friends section that you included their name on the rollover to clean it up. Looks great. =)

[Relentless]

This layout is interesting. Not that bad. I like the way everything is set up and such.

[vandosanchez]

i likes it. it has a pro look. XD

[Insurmountable]

Very nice, has a very professional look to it I wish it was centered pet peeve XD

Love the colors

[Mulder]

3 refreshes to get it to load. eep. the default still peeks through

..its ok. A little too plain, dark....
myspace layouts should be creative, y'know?

[rorhinna]

I like it, simple
good use of colors, I like
how everything fades and overlaps
at the top with the background.

[--DANNY--]

Thanks a lot for the feedback everyone!

I was aiming for the professional look, but I didn't want it to be too plain and simplistic, so I found a nice background, picked a color scheme and just spent a couple hours playing around in Photoshop

As for the profile not loading very quickly sometimes, I'm using my Comcast's account webspace and this week the space is being upgraded from 25MB to 1GB so there's some slight slow-down/downtime expected. It's normally lighting fast.
And right now it's not fully loading at all But I'm assuming that means that it will be finished upgrading shortly.

As for it being too plain & dark, like I previously said I was going for a more professional look so I didn't want it to be too flashy although I would normally agree with you.
I do think I used a lot of creativity in it's making though.

The fading/overlapping is what really added the final touch to the design for me.

In other news, I finally got DannyDahl.com up and running for my portfolio.
ShieldHost.com, they are a great host... when your website works.. it took like 3 months and a legal threat to get them to figure out what was wrong with their billing/tech department. Stay away from them! haha

[arcanum]

Whoa, very sleek! I like it, and the colors are nice.

[--DANNY--]

Thanks

Oh, and FYI: I just put all new music on my player.

I picked 27 of my favorite songs. One starting with a #, and then one for each of the 26 letters. And I threw them in alphanumeric order.
I know... I have way too much time on my hands haha
But good music though

[dustbunny]

I LOVE YOUR TASTE IN MUSIC!

and I like the concept of the alphanumeric list of music; good job!

[adolelolz]

I really like it.
It's very professional, and you have amazing taste in music. =]
(Oh my acoustic Diary of Jane.)
Question, though...Is the music player supposed to be visible? Because there's just a random empty space under "Music".

[IVIike]

I love it

[--DANNY--]

I take pride in my choices of music
I bought an extra hard drive for the sole purpose of keeping a backup of it all.
I would rather lose everything on my computer than my music

I'm actually listening to the Acousic Diary of Jane right now and before I even saw your reply haha creepy

And yes, the music player is supposed to be visible.

I've been having issues with the player off&on for the past few months. It's an issue with the order in which the flash vars are listed. And it only affects InternetExplorer. If you are on the page, then press refresh, the player should show up (most of the time).
If not, this is what is should look like. (link to pic)

I didn't think my layout would be this widely like lol

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

oh! also, I'm thinking about making the player on my page load a playlist randomly out of 2 or 3 different ones upon loading. They'll all be in Alphanumeric order like my current playlist, just mostly different songs. Good/Bad idea?

[clarity]

I like it sort of reminds me of windows vista for some odd reason. Although, I'd change the font and the font color since they don't quite match.

[xTHExDUDEx]

Good stuff, I'd also have to say it reminds me of Vista, clean cut and such.

As always I'd say center it. Also, not a problem for me but for lower bandwidth users and good practise I'd have the rollovers preloaded.

[--DANNY--]

Well, I used only 2 pictures for the friend rollovers to save on loading time, and they should be preloaded. They are placed hidden in the About Me section so that they don't have to wait for the entire profile to be loaded till it starts loading images in the CSS.
So they should be preloading to some extent.

[adolelolz]

oh! also, I'm thinking about making the player on my page load a playlist randomly out of 2 or 3 different ones upon loading. They'll all be in Alphanumeric order like my current playlist, just mostly different songs. Good/Bad idea?

Ooh, yes, do it. I'm into that. =D

[pandora]

i love the layouts. i dont like the capitalization of every first letter. this layout is very square and clean, so i think all the type should be straight edge too.

[Insurmountable]

booo

You changed the music, put the old music back! Or at least give me the player for it xD

[Jennifer]

Wow I really love the design of this. It's subtle yet very very effective.

The music player looks really good IMO, except somehow it doesn't seem to blend in with everything else

Other than that, great job

[--DANNY--]

Ooo. I like this alot. The grass image is really nice, and compliments well. I also like how you used a great font, that is readable. Very professional and sleek. Great job :D

Thanks

booo

You changed the music, put the old music back! Or at least give me the player for it xD

haha ya I changed it to go with the Alphanumeric theme.
But I'm thinking about making it randomly load one of two or three playlists when it's loaded, and my old playlist may make it into the cut

Wow I really love the design of this. It's subtle yet very very effective.

The music player looks really good IMO, except somehow it doesn't seem to blend in with everything else

Other than that, great job

I know, the music player is slightly out of place on the page.
I've been meaning to make a new skin for it. Or at the very least switch it over to a new WMP look-alike skin or maybe even a newer version of iTunes.

If anyone has any good ideas for how I should skin the music player, let me know.


Thanks again for all of the compliments and critiquing! I really appreciated it.

[--DANNY--]

Alright, well I created a new Alphanumeric playlist!

I used php to make the playlist.xml load a different playlist every time it's loaded.
There are only two total, but it switches back and forth between then each time it is loaded, so it won't load one twice in a row like it could if it were completely random.

It's on my myspace profile if you wanna check out the new playlist
myspace.com/DannyDahl

But I couldn't find a song for X or Z that was worth putting on there so I used the same ones from the last playlist.

Here's a direct link to the xml playlist file if you want to see how it loads a different playlist each time.

[pandora]

playlist doesnt show up for me. im using firefox on a mac.

[--DANNY--]

Hmm... it works using both FireFox & IE in both Vista & XP.
May be a Mac issue, I'll check in a few minutes...

[Blaqheartedstar]

uber awesome, love you set up the playlist and the image hover
but the myspace searchbar covers your header.

[--DANNY--]

I fixed the Google Searchbar issue

I've just checked, and my layout displays correctly on Vista & XP in Firefox & IE, and on Mac OSX in Firefox & Safari.
So there should be no issues

[pandora]

hmm i see it now. i dunno about the whole itunes playlist concept. it doesnt really match the rest of your layout.

i stand strong about your fonts though. your layout is clean. dont use camel caps.

[--DANNY--]

As I have previously mentioned, making a new skin for the player is on my To Do list.
Unless I have a set idea of what I want the outcome to be, it's hard for me to create something, in this case a skin for the player, from scratch.
I just haven't come up with an idea for how I want it to look yet
I used the iTunes skin to start with because it was the only half decent looking skin I had that supported a full playlist and album art.

I have mixed feelings on the small caps.
At times, I'll look at it and dislike it, at others, I'll try out all caps (same size) or just not small caps and I'll dislike it..
A few other opinions would help out a lot

But just now I changed the "All About Me" to not use small caps and I'm not sure about it...

Either way, I value everyone's opinion

[pandora]

as for the playlist, just make it match your layout. it doesnt have to be a totally separate element in your design. make it -part- of the design; that should give you some more direction.

smallcaps- i don't know... when you put small caps in a square design, it looks like one of those 14 year olds that used to type LyK DiS.