myspace graphics,layouts, and reviews - Articles - Zimbio

Blogs and Social Networks Fall HTML Graphics and MySpace Layouts - Oct 15,2008

Tue, 15 Oct 2008 05:04:25 GMT

posted by Wavecritter

Blogs and Social Networks Fall Layouts and Graphics

As Blogs and Social Networks sites go, locating an impressive Fall or Autumn quality layout without the Fluff of the Holidays is a bit of a task in itself :) Stevie and I have done the research for you and will give you a bit of insight into where these Falling Autumn sites full of the coolest of HTML graphics, comments and Layouts or backgrounds are hiding.

The first one we found with an awesome assortment of both layouts for MySpace, Hi5, and Friendster was DazzleJunction(this is the link to the Fall Layouts page) and this is the direct link to the Fall HTML Graphics and Comments Page. 10 pages of Fall HTML Graphics and comments and 5 pages of layouts geared toward the Fall Season. For future reference, Dazzle Junction also has an outstanding selection of Layouts and Graphics for all times, Holiday, Season, or not. Glitter, generators, MySpace Tweaks (these are neat helpers) for when you want to center out your friends or comments box, hide your friends from other visitors, scroll through your friends and shorten the box, hide the detail box and more. With some added basic HTML and CSS How To to boot! Along with 2009 calendars and personalized avatars and be sure to add Dazzle junction to your list of MySpace Friends with the easy link just on the Dazzle Junction site if you dig their stuff.

All4MySpace offers layouts, codes, graphics, and news. All 4 MySpace has over 130,000 free MySpace Layouts choices and under the "Nature" Layouts they have a kickin' Brad Pitt Legends of the fall Layout (if you are a fan, you just have to see this one:) with over 28 pages of more Fall Layouts to choose from. Over 16 pages of MySpace Fall Graphics and over 5 pages of Glitter Fall Graphics. It would do you well to come here first or second in your search for the best Fall Layouts for you. Their selection is tremendous and the quality is tops as well.

All4MySpace also offers generators along with the premade or design your own layouts. A layout stealer too if you must "Have" your friends exact layout.

Topbun.com is a site for layouts as well, but the real draw here, what makes them clever and unique is the selection of "Skinny" layouts you can get. It isn't such a cut and dry site and not quite as easy as the first two, but a small selection of great Fall Layouts.

We visited a few others like FreeCodeSource.com and found their site to have a small but cute selection of Fall design. MSNerdsLayouts.com has very little but some Fall Layouts. MySpaceIsUgly.com has a minor selection of Fall Layouts a few more than half are on the girly side, but if that is what you need, here you go. Satisfaction has some great art work but they are a bit on the link happy side.

Onto Pyzam.com and CoolChaser.com, two of the drop all very hands down best Layout sites for Blogger (Googles Blogspot) and for MySpace Layouts.

Pyzam is the layout of choice for one of my favorite sites backgrounds Under-The-Sea

Check them out for a Blogspot blog sites layout, but be certain to put it up early in the creation, sometimes adding or changing out you Blogger background will delete the widgets you have created in the sidebar. I would give it a try and if they will be deleted (the widgets) Blogger will let you know before to give you an option not to continue. Best to set your blog up the way you would like it from the beginning.

Cool Chaser has the very easiest and a very large selection of MySpace Layouts and Backgrounds. Your selection is from a plethora of photos from sites like Flickr. So, a Fall Layout is really at your service here.

Enjoy the Seasons!

Blogs and Social Networks

Stevie and Stephanie Haile aka Blogheiress and Wavecritter Google us :)

Spooky Halloween Layout

Fri, 18 Oct 2008 05:17:00 GMT

posted by layoutworld
Last week I discovered that Kiwee had put up MySpace layouts for Halloween, and since I was running out of decent layouts to look at, I was extremely happy to see that!

Now that Halloween is only a few days away, it is more essential than ever to find the best Halloween layouts for MySpace. I've been pretty happy with the layouts I've looked at so far this month, but I really want to make sure that every layout I look at is just as strong, so the layouts I review don't start to fall off as we get closer to the holiday. I was lucky to find these layouts, because the layout I looked at last week was by far the strongest Halloween layout in terms of design.

The Kiwee layout from last week had a very hip, edgy feel, it could easily have translated to a slasher movie poster. There is a big difference between that kind of scary and traditional Halloween spooky, so I was relieved that Kiwee also had a new layout dedicated more to the stereotypical ghosts and ghouls Halloween style.

The layout design is pretty simple. A haunted looking house sits at the center, it's in the background but close enough that it seems oppressive. In front of the house is a graveyard (naturally) and behind it or to the sides are spooky silhouetted trees. One of my favorite little details in this Halloween layout is the skeleton swinging from a noose under one of the trees.

All the information, including the user photo, is squeezed onto gravestones. This has a really nice visual effect, and from a design perspective, I love that they've got the guts to confine all the major content to the bottom half of the layout. This is pretty daring, the kind of thing you see in more adventurous magazines, but not as much in web layouts. I wish there were more of it because when it's well done (as it is here) it can be very effective.

The one downside to using the gravestones as content templates is that the lettering is smaller than usual, and it can be difficult to read. The title writing on top is also difficult to read because it's been changed to extremely stylized italic script.

Honestly though, I don' t think the legibility issue is a major problem. If anything it adds to the aged look of the gravestones, and the script writing above is definitely fitting. As far as I'm concerned, with Halloween only a few days away, that sacrifice is completely worth it.

Sparkle Tags Blogs and Social Networks Layouts and Graphics - Oct 10,2008

Thu, 10 Oct 2008 06:05:39 GMT

posted by Wavecritter

Sparkle Tags Blogs and Social Networks Layouts and Graphics

Sparkle Tags

If you are looking for some unique, very cool HTML comments and graphics, Sparkle Tags will have just that. An outstanding choice of Military comments, generators, backgrounds, music skins, contact tables, and network banners along with Sparkle Tags videos and a host of great layouts. The fluttering butterfly graphics are very nice and hands down a winner. Sparkle Tags is also quite compatible with the Ning blog social networks, Hi 5, MySpace, Live Journal, and Friendster. They also have a free download toolbar for hot news, top links, online radio, fun gadgets, and a Google Search.

Stephanie Haile aka Wavecritter Google Me

Spider Layout

Tue, 15 Oct 2008 19:08:00 GMT

posted by layoutworld
Since Halloween is getting pretty close, I've been really wanting to find some excellent MySpace layouts for the holiday. I've found some pretty decent ones, but I feel like I'm sort of running out of steam among the options on the web. I keep running into the same handful of websites that host Halloween specific layouts, and now I'm left with the layouts that I skipped over to begin with.

With that in mind, I was pretty excited to notice that Kiwee has some new layouts posted just for the Halloween season! As I've noted before, the downloadable layouts on Kiwee are more advanced that the ones I've seen in other places on the web, so to see Kiwee layouts designed just for Halloween is wonderful.

The first Halloween layout I chose is quite as excellent as I would expect, but I honestly can't look at it for very long. This is not because there's anything eye-watering in the design, as I've often commented on web layouts before, it's because I'm afraid of spiders and this layout has two animated spiders that crawl around the screen!

Very creepy. If you're afraid of spiders like I am, don't even look, I'm warning you. The spiders are the very skinny shivery kind, although they're black I think they look like silhouettes of brown recluses, (you can see the fangs) the kind of spider I'm most afraid of! If you're not afraid of spiders though, the animation alone would make this layout a good choice.

It's very realistic and well done, a good way to creep out friends visiting your MySpace page. Beyond the spiders the layout is fairly simple, but nicely designed. The colors smeared around the background look like rough paint smears in orange and black, but somehow the colors seem to keep from being overly cheesy Halloween just the same. I think it's because they are balanced by a white backdrop, which keeps everything looking a less childish. In fact, this layout is extremely mature looking, with the stark colors and contemporary design strategies. Less is customizable than in the Wood layout I've mentioned before, but I think that's because everything here ties together in essential ways.

In terms of mood, this Halloween layout is on the creepy side, but without the Halloween Soundtracks feel I've gotten from some of the other gothic layouts. If it weren't for the spiders and pumpkin, this layout design could easily be used as a good anytime layout. Since I love Halloween so much, I see no problem with using this layout year round anyway.

Halloween Top Three

Fri, 18 Oct 2008 05:27:00 GMT

posted by layoutworld
Happy Halloween everyone! I hope you are all having a fantastically freaky, frightening Friday! (Say that 10 times fast, go on, I dare you.)

I'm on a bit of a sugar high (as it should be) and hyped from carving Jack 'O Lanterns, so forgive me if I'm a bit overexcited. But really, if you aren't happy today is Halloween, I don't want to talk to you anyway. Go on, shoo, I'll be good and tolerant of holiday intolerance again in November.

Since it's a very special occasion, I want to look back at the last month of Halloween layouts and pick out my favorites. When I do this I'm looking both at mood and design. To be the perfect Halloween layout, it's got to have both.

Surprisingly, my choice for a third place layout is the first one I reviewed, way back in the beginning of October. This spooky layout could use a bit of design updating, but the mood is wonderfully dark and creepy, in exactly the right tone for Halloween. It's a bit manic, I wish they'd tone down the lightening, but it works well just the same. I'm very impressed with they way they cut off the background image so it looks like the right side of the screen is deep dark shadows; you can hardly tell the image just ended. My favorite part of this Halloween layout though is hands down the grinning Jack 'O Lantern with a flickering candle deep in its throat. It manages to look both sinister and realistic (in the pumpkin sense) all at once. It also makes me want to go out and carve a pumpkin.

My second and first choices for Halloween layouts were harder to pick, and they both came from the end of the month. I hate to have skipped over everything in the middle, but these two layouts from Kiwee were just too strong to ignore.

I finally settled on the spider layout as my second choice for a Halloween layout. I think this layout is by far the strongest design, but the mood is actually a bit too old for my tastes. This is very clearly a teenager's MySpace layout: it's meant for someone who is too cool for the silly ghouls and goblins of traditional Halloween decoration. Personally, when it comes to Halloween, I'm more of a traditionalist, which is why this one only got second.

The first place layout is the other Kiwee Halloween layout, a haunted house with all the content restricted to gravestones. Normally I'd have a problem with the readability issues on the gravestones, but I think it works here, and there are tons of nice little details, like barely noticeable scenes in the windows.

I had a lot of fun looking at Halloween layouts, but now I think it's time to go outside and scare some trick-or-treaters. Have a wonderful holiday weekend, and try to find an adventure!