Since MahShelf was launched, we have made 14 major releases (and tons of bug fixes). This time we were under heavy development migrating MahShelf code base from symfony 1.0 to the latest symfony 1.2. There are many reasons we wanted to upgrade. One big reason is that symfony 1.2 is powerful, lightning fast and flexible for adding more features in the future. In addition, we have improved the search engine performance which means MahShelf website will load much faster in your browser even when you make a complex search.

Each of us at MahShelf is a comic addict and we do think a lot about our comics readers and artists. In this release we want to bring something refreshing and fascinating to our users to express more about themselves: theme customization in the profile page. Interesting enough? Here is an example of my own profile before and after I have made some changes.

However, I think orange header suits best with bright background and finally I have a personal profile page which is up to my satisfaction within a few seconds.

The reason we made this feature happened is that we just want any artist who is already creative with their comics, to be more creative personalizing their own library page. We believe this feature will improve the communication between artists and their fans as well as building up the brand name of the associated comics.

PS: We’ve been gradually switching to the new version and hopefully you haven’t noticed too many problems. If you notice any problems please let me know directly at memphis.dao[at]mahshelf.com.

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Every book now has its own external reader that you can embed in any website to share with others. Usually, all you need to do is copying the code from the book page and paste it into your website.

Unfortunately, not every forum and blog allows HTML code due to some security issues. However, most of them support the convenient tag [flash][/flash]

[flash]http://somesites.com/flash.swf[/flash]

All you need is a simple hack with those tag by copying the book code

And append it to flash url like this

[flash]http://www.mahshelf.com/swf/external_player.swf?code=kEukYkEqk4[/flash]

There you go, enjoy sharing your books!

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Another release is here! This time we have enabled a lot of new features and modifications for the Flash book reader. Things are getting better and better as we come up with new features each day to make reading online books, comics and magazines more fun and convenient.

You can now add other users as friends, put comments in their profiles and subscribe to others’ bookshelves to receive notification each time they upload a new book. You’ll have to watch your own account page for the notifications, though. Later you will be able to receive emails whenever your friends upload new books, so you can be sure that you won’t miss any interesting stuff.

Also, uploading books is a lot faster now, as you can save template of the book’s descriptions before pressing “Upload book” button to publish a book. This feature is super useful for anyone who wants to upload multiple books with the same description (most likely chapters from the same series).

Last but not least, did you notice that our Flash reader has changed a lot? Take a look at this screen-shot:

See the loading icon besides the full-screen button? It indicates that the other pages are being loaded so that after you finish with the current page, next pages are ready for you to read. After all pages of the book have been loaded, that icon will disappear. Neat, huh? Just wait, there will be more coming up next week; probably something you can embed into your own sites or blogs.

Summer is coming. Have fun people!

–Odin–

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Hello! You can now select the following options for your books before uploading them as well as modifying later in ‘My account’ page:

• Set as “private” : private books cannot be found by other users through any search result, related book suggestion or the Bookshelf (Profile) of the users who uploaded those contents. If you want to read a private book, you’ll have to know the link of it. If you have uploaded some books that you only want to share with certain people, set them as “private”.
• Set as “not suitable for everyone” : if you have uploaded some books that have certain amount of mature content or might offense someone (but are not really violating MahShelf terms of use)…  set them as “not suitable for everyone”. When other users open these books, they will be notified with a warning message and required to Confirm that they really want to read the books regardless of the consequences.
• Disable commenting : Don’t want others commenting on your books? Chose this option.
• Disable rating : Don’t want others rating your books? Choose this option.

Some of you might have noticed the change of our ‘Flash reader’ recently. Indeed, we are testing the new reading application, which will make it most pleasant for you to read digital comics and books online. Summer is here! Have fun everybody

Kelvin

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