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Vintage threads from the first ten years

Re: Cookies and "press enter to reload"

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3/17/1998 12:13 PM

Re: Cookies and "press enter to reload"

“Just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t necessarily mean that there ain’t somebody out there to get you!”

Thanks Bjorn, that one always makes me laugh!

By the way, what’s in those small text files that reside on my hard disk?

Well, it can be anything that a website wants to keep track of. Each cookie can be no more than 4k in length though. You can see them for yourself if you know where to look: Netscape stores them in a file called 'cookies.txt', and MSIE stores them in different places depending on the version.

Here's a site that has lots to say about cookies and how they're used:

http://www.cookiecentral.com/" target="_blank">http://www.cookiecentral.com/">http://www.cookiecentral.com/

3/13/1998 11:16 PM

...the "press enter the BBS to refresh the messages" is a pain.

I feel your pain, R.G. ;-)

;-)

, but deleting duplicate posts every day is also a pain, and a somewhat larger one for me than the extra click-of-the-mouse that I've imposed on you. Today is the first day in a long time that there were no duplicates to delete, and I rather enjoyed being liberated from that little chore.

Although some duplicates occur through simple fumble-fingeredness, most are caused when someone posts a message, and subsequently presses the browser reload button instead of the 'enter bbs' button to refresh the message list. The reload causes the form to be submitted again, and a duplicate post appears. Adding the 'thank you' screen as an intermediate step in the posting process makes this much less likely to occur.

I'm actually working on a new bit of code that will detect and eliminate duplicates automatically, but it's a somewhat bigger hack than the 'thank you' screen, and will take a bit more time to implement.

- why are we doing cookies? Is this a result of a hookup with advertisers?

The cookie is being used for the sole purpose of providing a new convenience for frequent posters: It's no longer necessary to type in your name and/or email address for each new post.

The contents of the 'name' and 'email' fields on the post form are retained in a cookie from one post to the next. It's totally harmless, and has absolutely nothing to do with advertising.

And now, a word from our sponsors... (just kidding)

3/17/1998 9:13 AM
J Epstein	I'm laughing (on the inside) - Steve, check the last message from Bjorn. -j

3/14/1998 4:07 AM
Steve Morrison	It just occurred to me that I've created a bit more of a problem for those who might be using the noFRAMES version of the BBS. Sorry about that, and I'll be fixing it later today.

3/14/1998 5:48 PM
Steve Morrison	Update: "press enter to reload" For Netscape compatible browsers, the extra mouse-click has been rendered unneccessary; 'client pull' is used to refresh the message list automatically after the 'thank you' screen appears.

3/18/1998 1:02 AM

Steve:

    Do the "cookies" keep track of which posts we have already read? I was wondering about that because sometimes it's right on and sometimes its off a bit and other times it indicates all posts as being unread.

    Just an idea, but since the cookies evidentally identify us to your server is there a way that we can go back and delete some of our posts? I imagine that there could be a problem after someone has already replied to a post (with a pointer going to a non-existent post), but this might save you some time on your housekeeping chores.

    Re: duplicate posts. Sometimes my browser will seem to lock up for awhile and if I click the "post" button again at the right time (the wrong time?) the message will get posted twice.

Steve Ahola

3/19/1998 12:15 AM

Do the "cookies" keep track of which posts we have already read?

Nope. The cookie is only used to do the auto-insertion of your name and email on the post form.

...sometimes it's right on and sometimes its off a bit and other times it indicates all posts as being unread.

This is actually handled by your browser's history list, and you can change the settings for how many days it takes for a visited link to expire.

If the links don't all change color when you click on them, try moving the center frame divider a quarter inch or so with your mouse - this will cause a screen redraw, and all the links should show their true status afterward.

Concerning the deletion of previous posts, I actually thought you were joking when you posted about that in the suggestion box.

The idea kind of strikes me like a can of worms waiting to explode, But I will give it some more thought.

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