making an aim profile?

**MrPolite** · Jul 9th, 2003, 12:07 AM

aah excuse me if I'm asking too many "general" questions

I remember one of ma ole highschool friends made one of those with asp (ver3 ?). I'm talking about those so called "sub profiles". You put the link to the page in your aim profile and it loads the page in the user's profile when you click on it (rather than opening up a new page)... just wondering how I can do it

**MrPolite** · Jul 13th, 2003, 02:03 AM

bump

**Lethal** · Jul 13th, 2003, 01:29 PM

All you have to do is go to a site that does that and check out the html.

**Lethal** · Jul 13th, 2003, 01:42 PM

I'm rather bord at the moment, so I found an example for you

Code:

<a href="aim:addbuddy?screenname=ScreenName" />

**MrPolite** · Jul 13th, 2003, 01:48 PM

hmm still didnt work... I even saved a page like that and tried to load it to my profile, it opens it in a new browser window

edit: I didnt see your last post till now

thanks
I'll take a look at it

**The Hobo** · Jul 13th, 2003, 03:14 PM

What you need to do is have target="_self" in the profile link. How you get that into the profile link is what's tricky.

You can't type it in there, because AIM will parse the < > characters right away. So if you type something like this:

Code:

<a href="http://www.aol.com/" target="_self">AOL</a>

In Notepad or any other application, then paste it into the profile window, it should turn it into a link. Submit the profile, and then view it. When you click in the link, it should load it within the profile window, rather than opening a new window.

Newer versions of AIM may have a fix for this, though.

Now, the trick is that the loaded page can't have much HTML in it. Pretty much just basic tags, like <b>, <i>, <a>, etc. Otherwise AIM will either give an "Error loading" message, or just show a bunch of code.

So if you target it to a page on your website, ie http://www.mysite.com/aimprofile.html, make sure you use basic HTML and that all links on aimprofile.html have the target="_self" in it so that they will also load in the profile window.

If you need anymore explaination, let me know. I used to screw around with this stuff all the time.

Edit: Edited to make more sense.

**MrPolite** · Jul 13th, 2003, 06:45 PM

Hey thank Hobo!

one more problem for you though.... I want to make sure that people are viewing my profile from AIM. I don't know how to check the browser version and stuff and I don't really know what type/version of browser aim uses...
anyone can tell me how to determine if the page is being viewed by aim or by another browser?

**The Hobo** · Jul 13th, 2003, 07:44 PM

Hmm...that's a tough one. I'm sure that AIM either uses IE webbrowser control, or they parse for RichText.

What could help is making it have to pass a certain variable, such as http://www.yoursite.com/myprofile.php?f=wt658fj.

And if it doesn't have that wt658fj, then you know they didn't come via your profile.

It isn't fool proof, but right now it's about all I can think of.

Also, I have had problems getting .php pages to work. I haven't tried it in awhile, but I think whenever I had one, no matter what I put in it, it gave me an error.

Not sure, though. I'll fool around when I get home from work.

**MrPolite** · Jul 13th, 2003, 08:08 PM

oh hey I tried this and it seems to be working fine with my version of aim at least:

VB Code:

Dim browserInfo As String = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_USER_AGENT")
            Dim isAIM As Boolean
            isAIM = System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.IsMatch( _
                                              browserInfo, _
                                              "aim/", System.Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)

it's messed up coding though, I'll clean it up later

**The Hobo** · Jul 13th, 2003, 09:14 PM

Awesome. I'm not familiar with ASP, so I only understand about 60% of that, but cool.

**MrPolite** · Jul 14th, 2003, 02:23 AM

hehe now I have another problem.... when I load the page in IE, it looks normal... but when it's loaded in aim, there are like 3 or 4 empty lines before it shows the text. I have noooo idea why this is happening. I'll post some screenshots

**MrPolite** · Jul 14th, 2003, 02:50 AM

here:

and here's the html source when I view it in IE:

Code:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML>
	<HEAD>
	</HEAD>
	<body>
		Hello<BR>Nothing to say, <STRONG>go away</STRONG>.
	</body>
</HTML>

what the heck is wrong with this?

edit: changed that STRONG tag to B btw, nothing's wrong with that.... see all that white space in the profile? where does that come from?

**MrPolite** · Jul 14th, 2003, 02:56 AM

yay fixed, aim SUCKS, I had to change the HTML code in visual studio to this! (note I removed header, title and stuff and I had to put the <%@ page...> and <html> in one line

Code:

<%@ Page Language="vb" AutoEventWireup="false" Codebehind="aim.aspx.vb" Inherits="WebApplication2.aim"%><HTML><body><asp:Literal id="Literal1" runat="server"></asp:Literal>
</body>
</HTML>

**MrPolite** · Jul 14th, 2003, 09:53 PM

aaah I have a BIIIG problem
I can view it fine in AIM, but NO ONE ELSE can view it

what the heck, whoever who wants to view it gets the "Error loading content" message

what's wrong... help me

EDIT: OOOH MAN!! I feel dumb hahahahaha, feels good!

I used localhost for the link

**The Hobo** · Jul 23rd, 2003, 03:53 PM

How well do ASP pages work with it? I remember that whenever I tried to use a PHP file (even with just HTML in it), it always gave me the "Error Loading Content" messages.

**MrPolite** · Jul 23rd, 2003, 04:53 PM

well it's working quite fine....
I made a guestbook, profile page, pages to track people's ip, to track who;s been viewing my profile... another to let me edit/enable/disable my profile

umm the reason it gives you error could be because you have some sorta html tag that aim doesnt like. You can just put basic html tags in your page. no scripts either

**The Hobo** · Jul 23rd, 2003, 05:08 PM

I had something like:

Code:

<html><b>bold</b></html>

In a file such as info.php, and it wouldn't work.

**MrPolite** · Jul 23rd, 2003, 05:33 PM

Originally posted by The Hobo
I had something like:

Code:

<html><b>bold</b></html>

In a file such as info.php, and it wouldn't work.

hmm could be because you didnt have the body tag? I dont have a head tag but I have a body tag

**The Hobo** · Jul 23rd, 2003, 05:37 PM

Actually, it works perfectly now (just tested it). It must have been an issue back when I first tried it a year or so ago.

**MrPolite** · Jul 23rd, 2003, 06:27 PM

hehe probably the older version of the aim browser didnt work quite well with it... but it wont hurt to put that body tag in there anyways

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