Hiding the Default Myspace Page

[note added April 1 2007: it was this post, and the google query which led to my doing this, which started my myspace code tweak addiction. It was researching the answer to the particular google query, that lead to my having dreams about the layers and levels of the tables in the myspace code, and all the different ways to tweak them]

I am returning to an earlier theme, and creating a blog post based on the search engine queries which have been hitting this page.

The query of choice for this post is: "comment out" myspace
(In computer language talk, “comment out” means to enclose the code in comments so as to render the code non executable).

I wonder, was the person who entered this query looking to "comment out" myspace, so as to render the default code non functional?
Or were they looking for a way to comment the code they were adding?

I will cover both here.

MySpace does not allow any sort of "normal" or "standard" html or css syntax. This was the first thing I learned after I got over the barrier of figuring out where I was supposed to enter my customization code.

So I (and a few others who care to comment their code) have adopted the following techniques:
1) for html use a span, and assign it to class="off"
i.e.
<span class="off">COMMENT HERE</span>

2) Within a style block the following sort of works. It is more picky than the above, as to exactly what characters I can use within my comment.
{ your comment here }
If it evaluates to nothing understandable, by css, it is ignored.
Don't use the apostrophe or a single double quote. I am sure there are other characters which have caused a problem. I don't remember them right now.

Often people like to use the above as if their own initial is a class.
Or people who have seen someone else do a comment this way, will just copy the letter the other person used.

Hiding Page Content

If one didn't care about hiding the ad banner, or importing any of the default page content, it is very easy.

<style>
table, div {display:none !important}
</style>

I suppose you could still even get a div overlay onto the page, as long as you do it in such a way as to close ALL tables, so that your div was sitting above the table structure. Then your div would be at a parallel level to the display:none statement, so you could recover it.
But I don't cover div overlays in this article, so I won't go into that.

Hide Everything Except the Ad Banner

<style>
table table {display:none !important}
table div {display:none;}
div table div {display:block;}
</style>

The music page takes more code, due to that maroon nav bar. It has no class and is at a level where rendering it display:none would make it impossible to recover the ad banner. Put this code in your Bio:

<style>
table table {display:none !important; }
table div {display:none;}
form {display:none;}

div table.navigationBar {display:none;}
div table div {visibility:visible; display:block;}

div table {visibility:hidden;}
div table {height:auto !important; margin-bottom:-30px;}

table td{background-color:transparent;}
</style>

Now when you create your div overlay, I recommend that you still put your overlay one table deep, and then declare your div class display:block.
(I cover this in my div overlay article).

Related Articles:
Simple Div Overlay MySpace Band Page

Simple Hide Routines Friends And Comments without leaving excess whitespace

Band Page Top Area and Menus Including Maroon Nav Bar

Simple Hide Routines Right Side, Blogs, Extended Network


[ANOTHER BLOGGER BUG :-(
Posts sometimes loose ability to accept comments if I back out, without saving, while editing my posts. At first I thought I had modified while having comment ability turned off, I have now verified this is not always the case. Feel free to leave me a comment on another post.]