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  • bp 10:45 pm on August 28, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 17th   

    Exclusive Preview: imvucodes 5 

    imvucodes 5

    I will present you now imvucodes 5 which will be released on 17th of September 2009. It is now about the fifth version of imvucodes within the past 2.5 years and there is a lot new in this version!

    Code community: imvucodes 5 exists of a community containing users and groups where user can join to. Everyone can create an own group.

    Create code

    User content: It is now possible for every IMVU user to make up own content at imvucodes. The content can be attached to a group (that you own or manage) and then it is only accessable inside the group.

    ImagesImage upload: The image upload is finally back! Also images can be attached to a group and the group can be used as gallery then.

    Depending on your status at IMVU you have an upload limitation. This value maybe increased in future or on demand. For example, if you own your avatarname (means without Guest_ in front of it) and you are an active content creator you will be allowed to upload up to 260 pictures.

    Email notification

    Notifications: This is now a main part of imvucodes 5 that helps you to keep track on updated codes and happenings on imvucodes. imvucodes 5 has implemented three types of notifications. First, there is a typical mail notification, which means you will get a mail when imvucodes updates a main code or a code of a group you are member of updates a code. The same is possible for images. These notification settings can be changed in your account settings. Mail notification will only work if you once verified your email address (typical opt-in mail).

    Browser GrowlSecond, the page shows MacOS-like growl notifications in the lower bottom top right part of the browser when something happens on imvucodes. This news system shows who just logged in, added a code, created a group and even if someone joined a group. Third and last, imvucodes 5 allows you to get mail notifications as push messages onto your iPhone or iPod Touch using Prowl.

    Push notification

    Prowl is an app from the AppStore which usually acts as growl plugin on MacOS systems in order to get growl messages as push notifications when you are away from your Mac. Prowl also offers an open API to communicate with. This means: when you provide your Prowl API-Key in your account settings it will send you these notifications directly to your iPhone or iPod Touch.

    Banner statisticsAdvertisement: The past (current) version of imvucodes was overwhelmed with requests of adding user banners for products and pages that are IMVU related. Therefor imvucodes 5 has an improved and better way to add your banner right into the right spot. At the moment there are four banner spots on imvucodes 5. Two of them are rated at 0.1 credit per view (which may change some time) and the other two are completely free to use. Please note: Banners will of course be checked before set active and also you have to request to take part in the banner network of imvucodes 5 before you can upload your own.

    Accounts: imvucodes 5 completely relies on the OpenID verification concept. OpenID is a way to login over a second website (in this case IMVU) to gain the information that you are the one that owns the account you want to log in to at imvucodes 5. This makes sure you share your password in no way with imvucodes (just your avatarname) and allows imvucodes 5 to make the page exclusivly for IMVU users.

    More sneak-preview pictures:

    Settings Searchresults Groups Code view Banner upload

    Estimated release date: 17th of September 2009. Stay tuned. (originally posted at imvustars)
     

  • bp 10:52 am on July 10, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: behind, border, design, iframe, issues, layout, limitations, pages, product, security, technical, updates   

    Technical behind of product page updates 

    Ever wondered how IMVU realized the upcomming product page limitations? (They will be applied on on 14th of July to all creators – finally).

    A browser has some security limitiations which means you cannot access pages from different domains. I believe IMVU changed the domain for the product description. This basically means that the outer shop page is opened from the domain http://www.imvu.com while the inner product description comes from avatars.imvu.com. This basic change leads to the new limitation, so that scripts from within the iframe (which is located at avatars.imvu.com) cannot “talk” to the outer (parent) page.

    Some might think that this is a loose of opportunities in product design layouts and that they cannot express and present their products as they liked it before. For you, I can only say that the product pages are not part of your IMVU homepages. The limitations should have been set a way before (probably since the beginning already). The product page should not be changed outside the description iframe! Sure, it would be nice to have the ability to change the header or background of the outer page, but this is an additional feature IMVU might think to add some day.

    The whole problem behind this are techical issues and the ability to change a page you are not supposed to change. This does not mean everyone wants to harm others but the possibility is there! And as long as it is not being changed its a ticking time bomb until someone uses really mallicious and harmful codes to harm visitors and -actually the possibilites would be soooo various that you will not even think of the damage that could happen.

    There are a lot of meanings and opinions in the forums of IMVU. A lot of complains and sort of against IMVU, but please look at this problem from a different side!

    You might think why did pages like imvucodes or imvustylez and so on ever published such a code if its not supposed to be used?
    Well, we all are trying to serve the most possible possibilites for page customizations. A lot of codes have already been removed/hidden since they are against IMVU homepage rules. If you still use them you are in danger of getting your account blocked. And this is no joke. In some cases it might look wrong for you but in most it is just disrespectful to others, visitors and sometimes even IMVU.

    So what next?
    Now it is even more important to have a good looking presentation of the product within the description iframe. What are you waiting for?

     

  • bp 12:53 pm on May 22, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: addict, badges, bling, , , massbadger, openid, shop, system   

    MassBadger 

    MassBadger

    MassBadger

    MassBadger – “A shopping page for Badges of IMVU Developers”. After about three days of work the project started and is now in some kind of Beta stage. There might follow some additions, as there already did (e.g. Ajax-based search).

    First, I added all badges from any developers that I found on badge directory lists on the net (of course – only those who had the autogrant-feature enabled). Unfortunately, but understandable, some felt this was a step too far. Since then badges will only appear if confirmed by their owner. To do this you have to go to the MassBadger Panel and click the confirm button there. If you do not see your badge in the appearing list you can still contact me (as described on that page then). For verification to access the MassBadger Panel I use IMVU as OpenID Provider. This means you neither have to share your password with me nor having to create a new login. The easiest way is to make sure you are already logged in into IMVU when trying to verify.

    Badges will be added on request. A payment (credits) is not necessary but welcome. You can see the statistics of successful grants inside the panel for each badge. If you own badges on multiple accounts and want to have them located in one Panel, contact me as well.

    The ones that remain on the unconfirmed state at the end of June will be removed permanently from the project. So there is no need to inform me of taking a badge down that has not been confirmed yet and therefor is not visible at the moment. Neither profitable ads nor other annoying popups etc. will be placed on the page as it should remain as a choice for easy and relaxing shopping for badges.

    Features planned for future:

    • Integration of a detail view for each badge – if possible – including all badge details and owner links
    • Integration of a twitter account for latest adds
    • Figuring out the idea of tiny contests like: Top Given-out badge in month/week
    • more to come…
     

  • bp 5:14 pm on March 6, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: forum, group, , link, short, shorter, tiny, url   

    Shorturl Service 

    Although its already available since a few days I am going to post some more details about the shorturl Service here.

    The service ( http://imvu.at) only contains redirection links to imvu related sites. This could be a deeplink inside imvu itself, a group link for example. Moreover, if you think your private page is imvu related you can apply for whitelisting your domain. This makes sure that the redirection service is only used for sites that are from imvu or related to. Please note that freehost forums probably will not be added to the whitelist as their domainname is given to other forums as well and therfor they are not unique anymore and hardly to identify.

    When adding your domain name you have to enter your avatarname (and validate it through imvu’s openid provider) to give me a way to get in contact with you.

    For those who still dont know what I am writing about, check this example out: Lets say you want to make a banner code and decide to add a link to your group which for example is the IMVU CODES Group ( http://imvu.com/groups/group/IMVU%2BCODES). Actually, this is already a short example, there are even longer links because of longer group names.

    For sometimes strange reason your code might get broken because of a space inside the link and/or the incorrect usage of the banner code. Since the groups are related to imvu you could go on http://imvu.at and paste the url inside the textbox there. By clicking the triangle at the right you create a shorturl, which is in this case: http://imvu.at/imVrk

    When you follow the new url you will be redirected to the targeted group page.

    This link doesnt include any problematic characters and is kept kind of short. In this version it also has a prefix which shows that this link is a deep link into the website of imvu.com (the first two letters of imVrk means IMvu). Prefixes will only be given to one page and cannot be used multiple times. Avatar pages for example have the prefix av (when using avatars.imvu.com as domain).

    This page is still in a kind of beta stage but should work fine as long as your page is approved. If you enter an unapproved link a application form will appear that allows you to submit the request to have the certain domain applied.

    Especially this is usefull for long group names or deeplinks inside the forum. At the moment there is no limitation in timelife of such shorturls and this is not planned anyways at the moment. Suggestions, ideas? Comment!

     

  • bp 3:21 pm on January 20, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: analysis, analyzer, balance, cancled, cooldown, delete, disabled, imagehost, , load, picture, traffic   

    Imagehost Service disabled 

    Due to high-rising traffic by the imagehost service the service has been temporarly disabled. It *might* return but will use some more strictly limitations or maybe a post-processing image analyzer that shrinks down the images size and/or quality.

    Until further notices the services is cancled. Please use a different services as there are plenty enough outside (e.g. imageshack.us).

    The saved images will still be accessable but deleted after an one month inactivity.

     

  • bp 11:12 pm on January 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: change, , power, release, server, sorry, structure,   

    Server changes. 

    imvucodes moved to a new server, this caused some problems in accessing images from the imagehost-service as well as the main page itself. Sorry for that. It should be fixed now.

    One strange thing I found out is that the DNS Record pointed to the server when itself didnt recognize the domain on his behalf still. Caused weird results, but fixed.

     

  • bp 1:18 pm on December 7, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ads, alert, annoying, block, chromedit, , confirm, firefox, javascript, plus, popups, pref, prevent, prompt, scam, , settings, user.js   

    How to block alert popups on imvu!? 

    Yay. Ever wondered if its possible to block those annoying alert popups on imvu? I mean not in general and not when turning off Javascript on your browsers settings. I mean just for imvu homepages!

    The following does only work on Firefox!

    Some steps are required in order to make it work.

    1st: Grab this extension for firefox: ChromEdit Plus and restart your browser to activate the addon.
    2nd: Decide on what things you want to block. Just alerts or even confirm requests and propmpting boxes?
    Expecting you want to block it all you need to do the following steps:

    Click on Tools > ChromEdit Plus > ChromEdit and go to the user.js tab. Now be careful on what you are doing here. When adding the following lines of code there it will block all popping up boxes on websites that start with avatars.imvu.com:

    // block alert popups on imvu
    user_pref(“capability.policy.policynames”, “imvurestriction”);
    user_pref(“capability.policy.imvurestriction.sites”, “http://avatars.imvu.com”);
    user_pref(“capability.policy.imvurestriction.Window.alert”, “noAccess”);
    user_pref(“capability.policy.imvurestriction.Window.confirm”, “noAccess”);
    user_pref(“capability.policy.imvurestriction.Window.prompt”, “noAccess”);

    To tell you more about the code: First we define a policyname (imvurestriction) to be used on sites like http://avatars.imvu.com. The three lines after that are used to define an noAccess-Rule to the alert/confirm/prompt functions of Javascript. If you decide to not disable all three of them, just leave out the ones you want to keep. When finished: Save and Restart and it will immediately take action. Technically this means the browser prevents access to this built-in features on imvu homepages because of these settings.

    Like this Javascript is still fully working and the pages will still loading fine as usual, but without any annoying popups.

    Against annoyance. Ben

     

    • Productions 9:38 am on December 17, 2008 Permalink

      Just a problem might be, that once a imvu avatar page was loaded and closed the browser still reminds: “oh I should not display alert messages” and will still not show them even when a totally different website is open.

    • Cibele Grenza 9:22 pm on December 18, 2008 Permalink

      eu gostaria de arrumar minha homepage

    • Richard 9:23 pm on May 2, 2009 Permalink

      This doesn’t seem to help against the blue advertisment bars that are on top of every page when you are logged in. Those really need to go, but I can’t find out how. Any suggestions, anyone? PLEASE? :?: :?:

    • Ben 9:30 pm on May 2, 2009 Permalink

      This doesnt help indeed against these advertisements because it wasnt made for it. Blocking the ads is not strictly allowed. Even more its _not_ allowed. Thats why you wont find the code on imvucodes – yet – anymore. Just for the reason that it is risky to use. Accounts already got blocked because of using codes that hide certain things on the pages.

  • bp 12:55 pm on December 6, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: better, blog, , faster, host, improvements, , , layouts, , , twitter, version, xmas   

    Introducing Blog 

    It has been quite a while since imvucodes had a blog-liked content. It was handy but barely updated.

    Anyways I decided to make up a simple blog until its news will be included into the new imvucodes version that is being prepared (already for a while).

    Imvucodes gets its 16.000 visitors each month, rising. The work I put in imvucodes will have a totally redesigned and improved version upcomming in the next version. It should be ready somewhen next year…

    Thanks for trusting imvucodes and stay tuned.. for the next version on a new space. Any I go even a step further. No idea how many of you heared about Twitter, but I made up a new account there that will post updates and any kind of useful stuff belonging to imvu and its codes on time! Feel free to follow!

    Merry (early) Xmas,

    Ben

     

  • bp 7:31 pm on November 10, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: down,   

    [FIXED] imvucodes.net temporarly down 

    Sorry for any inconvencies this may cause but imvucodes.net is temporarly down.

    The problem is reported and is being investigated and should be back shortly.

    This includes the image hosting part of the page. Pictures will be available once the server is accessable again.

    Will be available very shortly… Please be patient. online again

    Ben

     

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