Twitter Layouts

[Emmie]

So I'm wondering if any of you talented graphics artists would be interested in trying to make a Twitter layout. I don't really know what this entails (specifics of size, etc.), but I think it'd be awesome if we started doing this.

And also, I want a Buffy Twitter layout! (Or is it called a background? See how I'm lacking in the knowledge here) Is anyone interested in giving it a go? Perhaps expanding your repertoire...

[Skytteflickan88]

I'd love to give it a go.

Anyone know of the size requirements or such?

Maybe we could have a layout-challenge for slayalive's twitter.

[Emmie]

Aug 31, 2009 4:20:06 GMT -5 Skytteflickan88 said:

Maybe we could have a layout-challenge for slayalive's twitter.

Yes, I was thinking about seeing who'd be up for designing it.

[xaphania]

I've never attempted a Twitter layout before, but I think it could be fun. If there was a challenge, I'd enter it.

From some googling, I found:

If you want the photo to fill the entire background, the size of the image is also important. It should be at least 1280×1024 pixels in size and preferably larger. Depending on the background and whether or not it can be nicely blended into a solid background color or not, I typically use 1600×1200 and even 2048×1600 for some backgrounds. It’s not likely that folks with huge monitors stretch their browsers to fill the entire screen, but you never know.

File size is something else you’ll want to think about when you create large photographic backgrounds. Twitter limits the file size to 800k but I recommend staying much smaller than that or otherwise your beautiful background will take too long to load. In some cases I’ve gone a little over 300k but I prefer to keep them under 200k. When you’re saving the .jpg file, you’ll want to experiment with the compression percentage to get the smallest file size you can achieve without degrading the quality of the image too much.

Once you’ve selected your background, you may want to change the colors of the sidebar background and border so they complement the colors in the overall background image. Don’t pick a dark color or your text will be hard to read. You might be tempted to use white or light-colored type on a dark background but the problem is that if you use light colors for your text links they won’t show up in the upper row of navigation links.

Here are some things you need to know before getting started:

* Your twitter background will force itself to the far left of the page. Give your self some room from the left side.
* People have different size monitors, so it is best to keep the graphics on the left and a solid color on the right so that you know they are seeing what you want them to see.