In this community, LiveJournal staff announce upcoming releases, with information about bugfixes and new features. Everyone is welcome to add this community to their Friends list.

If you have questions about how to use LiveJournal, or if you have a problem with something that isn't listed in the most recent release, please open a support request instead.

Thank you for all your comprehensive feedback on m.livejournal.com. Please keep the comments coming so we can make it the best product possible before switching it over from /mobile/. (I am a heavy user of /mobile/ too, so I'm invested in this as well.)

Bugfix:

* Fixed a problem with managing your friends list via friends/edit.bml


Updates You Probably Won't Notice:

* Bugfix for people who use changelog
* Update to yesterday's gift shop backend work
* Ad-related backend changes
* Another update to prep for the new Cyrillic thing coming soon

Volunteers:

* Not really release-related, but the PAF has been summoned. Sorry about the delay.

Meta:

* Minsecurity of lj_releases has been changed to Public, so you can get notifications if you want 'em.

Welcome to the Turkey Week edition of lj_releases! (Those of us on the US side of the pond will be thankful for a few days' rest if nothing in this release is seriously broken.) ;-)

Features & Upgrades:

• It is not possible to reset your password unless you have control of the current validated email address. This may or may not be a temporary change; please stay tuned as internal discussion continues.


• Brand new build with many improvements for http://m.livejournal.com/ -- please test with your mobile device and let us know what you think! This will replace /mobile/ in the near future, so please speak up in comments here.


• Facebook Beacon has been replaced by Facebook Connect
• You can now add a subscription to receive new questions by writersblock
• Support staff/admins can now mass-close requests with credit.
• You can now edit your "Notes" while viewing comments (if you're using the site scheme/old comment page layout)
• Removed the BUY100 and BUY250 commands for TxtLJ, and the web interface equivalent
• Creating a new account now allows for autodetection of your location
• Various improvements to our geolocation feature
• Updated the databases we were using for countries and ZIP codes
• Backend improvements for the gift shop
• Preparations for a new feature/game for Cyrillic-language users

Bugfixes:

• Non-validated accounts are now properly blocked from leaving comments to Independent Minds articles. (Good riddance, spammers!)
• When making a bulleted/numbered list in the RTE, <lj user> tags won't break the list.

FAQ-related changes go here.

Site's been slow for a little bit because we were pushing a tiny little release live with one major bugfix:

* Editing a screened comment no longer unscreens it. (Ouch, sorry about that one.)

The rest are various backend updates: statistics, release scripts, svn/changelog posting permission changes, upgrades in how we add new vgifts & styles, whitelist adjustments.

Release #57 is now live. Here's what is in it:

Feature changes and improvements:

• Added Notes feature to "Add Friend" and "Ban and Unban users" pages. See this post in paidmembers for more details
• Added link to new comment/entry search on all current search pages
• Writers Block email notifications now contain the question in the body of the email

RTE gets some lovin' - we've updated our RTE editor to FCKeditor version 2.6.5. This addresses some outstanding bugs, and some additional bugs now have fixes, too:

• When switching from the RTE to HTML editor, links for syndicated feeds no longer become broken (LJSV-687)
• Removed super-special celebrity status of a particular journal, which was getting inadvertently linked to whenever a div class was used to reference an LJ user (LJSV-625)
• Fixed issue where entry content was replaced by <br /> upon post in some situations (LJSV-747)
• Pressing "ъ" (Cyrillic "Yer" sign) when using the RTE no longer switches to bold text mode, and now correctly renders the character
• Switching from RTE to HTML editor no longer inserts extra line/space (LJSV-486)
• RTE functions now work properly in Safari 4.0 (LJSV-648)
• Insert Image link now works correctly in all browsers
• The "LJ user" button now gives correct code in Opera so that lj-user tags render properly

Changes, updates, bugfixes:

• Comments containing links from untrustworthy domains are automatically screened
• The time on an entry now updates to reflect the time actually posted and not the time the update.bml window was opened
• Memcache workaround for disappearing comment issue (LJSV-748)
• Fixed bug in Sponsored Accounts program so that users can decline after the sponsorship period has expired
• Adjusted width of right column on logged-in homepage for livejournal.ru
• My Guests interstitial now functions as intended (it is set to off, even though the "yes" radio button is pre-checked)
• When adding a contact on LJ Messenger, if the person has not set up an account it now sends proper request to contact to create account
• Fixed code glitch on charity v-gifts in gift shop
• After redirect to login page, user is returned to orignial page after logging in (LJSV-685; DW-1460 - Thank you!)
• Ratings indicators on livejournal.ru homepage now work in IE
• Increased timeout and cache time so that external stylesheets (cssproxy check) should now appear properly under periods of high load (LJSV-450)
• Link types that end in things like "-pool" should now render correctly and not get cut off
• Comments with padding/backgrounds no longer wrap outside of the comment box (LJSV-755)
• AdSense tab now shows for Basic/Plus users but is greyed out
• Turned on geo-location feature on new account creation and edit profile pages

Deployed earlier today; all of this should be live now.

As announced in news today, Yandex-powered search of LiveJournal is now in public beta. If you uncover problems with the search feature, please comment here with details so we can pass this information to developers.

Design:

• More tweaking of the logged-in homepage layout
• New style: "Penguins" by contest winner herbera!
• (Preparations for Halloween mischief! Mwa ha ha.)
• Proper alignment of virtual gifts on the profile page (they're no longer crooked)
• Moved the "Friend?" checkbox to the left side of the "Add or Remove Friends" page
• A few ad placement changes for Cyrillic users
• Usernames now appear on the Writer's Block answers page
• When posting an answer to a Writer's Block, the "block"'s appearance in your journal now includes the number of public answers available for you to browse
• Show the Writer's Block on the "Add Friend" and "Add Notifications" pages
• OpenID users from fanat.ru have a different default userpic

Added restrictions to what non-validated accounts can do:

• Disallow adding users as friends
• Disallow creating entries
• Disallow sending private messages
• Disallow creating, joining, or watching communities

Etc:

• Site text clarification to remove more references to cash or check payment options
• Notifications about virtual gifts now come with the standard LJ user icon display, meaning now there's links to the sender's journal and profile
• New virtual gift category: SupCity

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a display bug with the "view all vgifts" page [Note: And seem to have introduced a new display bug; see comments.]
• Fixed incorrect link on Writer's Block "block"
• Fixed a bug in how the header displayed on the Entertainment section of Explore LJ
• Deleted & purged journals are now suspendable
• Backend upgrade to the mail servers
• Fixed a display bug with the count of notifications available on LJ Messenger
• The "force_ads" account flag (used for support & design test purposes) works again

(This is my first time doing this write-up, so I may have missed a few things. Please go easy on me! :-) Thanks, Carrie/coffeechica)

Release #55 was deployed late yesterday. It's a small one, but with some logged-in homepage changes.

Homepage

• Added account upgrade module for non-paid users
• Added vgifts to birthday module
• Added featured themes

Bugs and changes

• When a user has Minimalism set as a style, they will see further information on ad customization on the Settings Page for Your Journal - Your Money
• Changed behavior on Your Journal - Your Money landing page depending on account type (Paid accounts will have a link to the Settings page; non-Paid will have a link to purchase a Paid account)
• Added an opportunity to invite a friend to LJ Messenger when trying to add an LJ friend as a contact who does not have a Messenger account

Changes made in patch release today:
- Modified our crossdomain.xml to disallow cross-domain script access from any flash media
- Re-enabled media embedding from all sites except for the one on which this exploit was hosted

Due to an exploit that took place through media embedding (lj-toys), we temporarily disabled that feature this evening.

At the present time, we've re-enabled media embeds only for two sites:

http://www.youtube.com/
http://video.rutube.ru/

We will have a post in news shortly to explain the exploit and what occurred, and will add to the media whitelist over the next few days.

Release #54 has gone out today.

Your Journal - Your Money/Google AdSense for Paid users

Paid users will now be able to link their LiveJournal account and a Google AdSense account in order to display ads on their journal. As a Partner website with Google Adsense, LiveJournal will not take any revenue sharing; you will receive 100% of the revenue generated through use of the AdSense program.

- These ads will not be displayed to other Paid users (unless they also participate in the AdSense program and specifically select to see them)
- For more information, please see news, paidmembers, and the FAQ

XML-RPC change:

Added userpic, number of comments, and last date in getfriendpage</li>
• Added number of comments and last date in getevents
• XML-RPC postevent, editfriends, editfriendgroups, editevent, and consolecommand will only work for accounts with a validated email address

Bugs fixed and other changes:

• Tag clouds no longer appear as a list in Expressive when using Firefox 3.5 (LJSV-666)
• Checkboxes for event notifications will be enabled for users who have an LJ Messenger account turned on
• Added URL to small picture of v-gift to alert notifications about v-gifts
• Visited links in ESN notifications will now appear a different color than unvisited links
• ESN notifications regarding invitations to communities now work
• The author of an entry in a community which allows tags to be set by both author and maintainers may now set tags during post creation instead of having to go back and edit them in