speaking of page coding.... and wz and Opera 7

[Lance]

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speaking of which, why do the wz forums not remember that i've logged in when i'm using Opera 7.11b build 2887 or any other version of O7, but works fine with any version of Opera6? and yes, before you ask, i have all the settings options for passwords, pop-ups, etc set the same on 6 and 7 and i am temporarily bypassing Proxomitron to get direct access to the site. however, i have the annoying 'wand' thing switched off since i do not want passwords entered automatically
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[FoxZero]

weird lance, im using opera 7.01 and the whole site works fine for me

[xEik]

Works OK on 7.11 build 2880. Look at your cookie settings, it's the only thing I can think of.

[Lance]

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my settings when accessing the wz forums on both 6 and 7 are to:
enable referrer logging
enable automatic redirection
use cookies to trace password protected pages
enable cookies
automatically accept all cookies
do not accept third party cookies
throw away new cookies on exit

these settings work correctly for me on wz with Opera6, but not with Opera7

btw, after this immediate discussion is complete, i will move the sequence of browser related posts into a new topic
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[xEik]

phpBB uses cookies to keep you logged. Our settings only differ in 'use cookies to trace password protected pages' (I have it unchecked) and 'throw away new cookies on exit' (you should make sure Opera doesn't throw your WipeoutZone forums cookie when closing the program)

[Lance]

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i never keep cookies of any kind from any site; but this has never caused a problem on the wz with Opera 6. why, with the very same settings should it cause a problem with Opera 7? in any case, the browser is not being closed while i'm here. the pattern of behaviour on 7 is that i go to the forums index page, and login. it then shows the usual latest posts, blah, and blah, AND that i am logged in. then when i try to access any forum, it shows me a log-in page. once i have logged in for the second time, i can read and post in a topic in that forum without logging in again unTIL i go back to the index page, which stiLL says i am logged in even though it has been refreshed, but when i go to another topic, it agAIN shows me a log-in page. this is why i always use Opera 6 to visit wz unless i'm checking out the latest build of Opera. it's extremely annoying.

i should have also mentioned that both 6 and 7 are set to 'ask for password every time needed'
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[Task]

I've got no problems, either. 7.01 build 2651.
Try turning the wand on, just for kicks.
I generally hate all "password storage" untilities and functions, but this wand that's build into Opera allows me to right-click-next-page gesture through login screens, and I think that's pretty damn spiffy.

[Lance]

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indeed it is spiffy for those who need or desire it, but i found it so annoying that i used to edit the appropriate ini file to disable it, back in the days when it was not yet possible to disable it in the preferences dialogue

2651?! why are you still using that antique? ;) 2880 and 2887 function far better. new features enabled and old ones working the way they were intended. everything before 2880 is essentially a beta release

when i log-in with the 'wand' enabled, any trip back to the index page shows that i am no longer logged in, so that when i try to access a topic, it again shows me the log-in page. the 'wand' makes it about 2 seconds quicker to log in, but log in i must. this is crap
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[Task]

... I _like_ betas...

8 ) Actually, it's just pure laziness. I should have DLed the new Opera a LONG time ago, and I just haven't gotten a round tuit. Perhaps I'll pick one up tonight when I'm out to see that movie...

I'm thinking that if you enable the wand, you might start magically being logged in again. Chunking out a section of code can sometimes carry away desirable side-effects.
It's just a sign of sloppy programming, but whatcha gonna do? One complaint for Opera would be the first I've heard. 8 )

[FoxZero]

perhaps you need to refresh the index page? this happens to me.
i always set wipeoutzone to leave me logged in so as long as i leave 'throw away cookies on exit' unchecked and have wipeoutzone.com under my accepted domains for cookies then ill be okay.

[Lance]

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Jay: please re-read my previous post. i am already using the wand since your first suggestion that i do so. wz still demands that i log-in when i try to access anything from the index page. just like without the wand, but slightly quicker to log-in on each of those should-be-unnecessary occasions. i have not rewritten the wand instructions in the ini files since version 7.10 beta 1 came out

Jason, this happens with index page refreshed and also with it unrefreshed. i do not nor have i ever used the domain filters. there are only two sites that i go to that require cookies. normally i use one of my Opera 6 versions to access those, wz included, with all settings permanently left in the configuration i mentioned. in all other brower versions i use, i do not accept cookies at all except to occasionally do a test of wz with a new browser. the Opera forums themselves can be browsed and posted to with Proxomitron on and cookies nOt enabled.

dammit, i'm getting snippy. sorry about that
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[xEik]

I don't know if this will help you solve the problem but...

phpBB uses a security mechanism for users sessions. When you log in, your session has a max amount of time after which you are kicked from the forum. This is done for security reasons, specially when you acces a forum from a public computer and don't want the next user on that computer to enter a forum with your identity. Normally in this case the safest thing to do is log out once you are done but for being in the safer side, the forum will kick you out after a given amount of time just in case you forgot to close the session.
What happens then when you log in with 'Log me on automatically each visit' selected? As soon as the board kicks you out, it checks your cookies to see if it can log you in again automatically. If there is no cookie available, you are out; if there is, you are in. This gives you the impression that you are always logged in.

Now the weird things: WipeoutZone's forums time limit is set to 3600 seconds but Lance comments give the impression that this happens much sooner so I'm not sure if the long and boring explanation above applies.

[AmishRobot]

Just a thought, but is it possible that in your older ver.'s you had checked "throw away new cookies on exit" _after_ accepting and saving the WOZ password cookie? I don't see how it would be possible to automatically log in without some sort of cookie stored on your machine. Maybe try opening up O6, and looking at your stored cookies before you visit any pages.

I know it's a little stupid sounding, but my experience in tech support has taught me that the stupid stuff is usually it.
...and I think we've already established that the computer is plugged in. ;)

[Lance]

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James, i don't use automatic log-in at all ever. and i always had throw-away cookies on exit set when i configure each new browser version immediately after installation and before i ever go online with it.

xEik, it is not even a time duration. i log in, then when the index page pops up after log-in, i immediately click on the topic i want to go to first and am then shown the log-in page. this behaviour occurs only with version 7, but never with 6. yet you, Jason, and James all manage to have it work with one version or another of 7. thus far, i have tested pretty much all of the following versions of Opera with the wz forums:
6beta1, 6.00, 6.01, 6.03. 6.05, 6.06, 6.06b, 7.00beta1v2, 7.00beta2, 7.00, 7.01, 7Bork, 7.02, 7.03, 7.10beta1, 7.10beta2, 7.10beta3, 7.10, 7.11, and 7.11b. the result is that ALL of the versions of 6 work correctly, and NONE of the versions of 7 do, even though the password settings are identical for all of the 20 versions listed. [yes, i have the installation files for 6.02 and 6.04, but i don't currently have them installed] you've already read the results of today's test of the 'wand'.

about your other comments, as i said in the first paragraph, i never use automatic log-in as it would be pointless when the browser throws away cookies on exit, which is what i want. and this has always worked with 6
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[Lance]

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as a last resort during the course of playing with all the settings, and attempting to allow every possible outside intrusion into my computer in an attempt to get wz to work with Opera 7, i also set the browser to display warning messages. this is the sort of thing i got:

Cookie security breach
''The server tried to set an illegal cookie. The combination of the server's hostname and the domain attribute for this cookie is not acceptable and the cookie has therefore been rejected.

You might want to ask the site's Webmaster to set legal cookies.

Address _______ http://wipeoutzone.com/forums/index.ph...


phpbb2mysql_sid=50f6f53789c45d8898a26d4b400b8664; path=/; domain=www.wipeoutzone.com



that last part is presumably the cookie that the site attempted to set, yes? i received many warnings like this during the experiments, sometimes 2 or more for just one mouseclick. i think the record was 4 warnings, each with a different cookie displayed
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[xEik]

I've tried to change the cookie settings to something that should be more adequate. Please Lance let me know of the differences you experience as soon as you can.
Chances are that all of you who use automatic login will need to login again but it should be only once.

[Lance]

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xEik, you might want to make a short-term stickypost to that effect, as not all our members read all topics. that would be particularly true of this topic because it concerns a browser most of us don't use [although at least 6 of the active members do. in addition to the 5 who posted in this topic, 'wiseman' also uses Opera]
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[xEik]

First I'd like to know if your problem was solved. Then I'd want to know if people who use the autologin needed to login again after the change in the cookie settings. Anyways, you must login again any time you delete your cookies or if you access the forums from another computer.
I think that users are smart enough to see if they are logged or not. I know they still can login because I've seen several people during the day, the only possible difference would be not being logged automatically.

[Lance]

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i didn't yet know if the problem had been solved when i made the previous response because i had gone back to using version 601

i'm sure they are intelligent enough to know that, but i suspect that, like most intelligent beings, they like to know whY an unusual behaviour is occurring. :) i certainly do, so i like to do others that courtesy.

um... yes... the log-in problem. i'm now on with 7.11b and it seems to be working though i've not had a chance to try everything yet. THANK YOU :D

edit: a bit later and i've used more functions. it's still working on all that i've tried so far. no 'illegal cookie' warnings issued by the browser. what did you change, xEik?
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[xEik]

If you have cookies enabled, even when you don't check the 'keep me logged in' option, the forum keeps track of your session with a cookie that only lasts as long as your browser is open (no matter you settings). If you don't have cookies enabled the forum will track your session via the URL (those who don't accept cookies can see how adresses get appended something like 'sid=(garbage numbers here)'. These numbers aren't garbage but an id that lets the forum know that you are effectively you and not someone else. Different numbers are assigned to you every time you start a forum session.

Now, what I suspect that happened to you, Lance, is that the forum detected that you had cookies enabled so it tried to track your session via a cookie and not by appending the sid. The problem was that the cookies' domain wasn't set up properly. This caused Opera7 to detect that the cookie domain wasn't correct (and indeed it wasn't). I assume you have Opera 7 set up in some way that will ignore or block cookies that don't have a correct domain. Hence you being logged out every time you clicked a link. The forum couldn't keep track of you because it couldn't use the apropriate cookie in your machine and no sid was appended to the URL you visited.

In fact, it is quite a neat feature that tries to enhance security against sessions being hijacked but permits using the forum even without cookies and is natively built in in phpBB. The forum was correctly kicking you out because it saw you as someone who seemed to be logged in but didn't appear to have the cookie needed to continue logged.

Then, what was the problem? A bad set up of the cookies that the forums gives to users. As soon as you mentioned a cookie domain problem I remembered that it is a common problem with people who have installed phpBB. A bad configuration of cookies can even prevent users from logging in at all. Then you may ask why it is so difficult to set up. Well, it is not difficult but it's not really intuitive. In the field for configurating the cookies domain something like '.wipeoutzone.com' should be used instead of 'www.wipeoutzone.com'. Don't ask me the reasons for this because I'm not really sure of that myself. It probably has to do with the way the software handles cookie domains, so nothing can be done about this but it is easy to track down and correct.

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION ! 8)

[xEik]

Lance if you can confirm that O7 works fine in the forums and no further changes have to be made, I'll post that sticky or maybe a post in the announcements forum since people who only use the main page to look at the newer posts only see stickies when posted while announcements is something that everybody should take a look at whenever there is something posted there.

Please, someone who uses the automatic login, I need some feedback from you. Did you need to log in again today?

[Lance]

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i can confirm that it works with all the normal functions a regular member would see. i've not performed moderator actions such as moving topics or deleting the posts of others, but these functions seem to be available to me and i see no reason why these actions would not work properly since read, post, automatic travel to last post, page refresh, etc. all leave me with a functioning cookie and no warning messages.

since i set up 6 and 7 exactly the same, the behaviour is apparently something new in the coding of 7, but the odd thing is that i was the only one of the users of O7 to see this browser reaction. possibly a difference in isp and the new browser's interaction with it?
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[FoxZero]

well that explains why it worked for me, i have 'accept illegal paths' on

[Lance]

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well, not exactly. because at the times i received those messages, i also had ''accept illegal paths' enabled, but the cookie was still automatically rejected. i tried setting everything to allow the site to do anything it wanted. at that point, my privacy preferences were set as follows:
enable referrer logging
enable automatic redirection
use cookies to trace password protected pages
enable cookies
accept all cookies [normal cookies]
accept from all servers [third-party cookies]
throw away new cookies on exit [which does not affect acceptance and does not affect anything until browser is closed]
display warning for illegal domains
accept illegal path
display warning for illegal path

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informal poll: how many members of wipeoutzone use some version of Opera as their main browser?

i, do, of course, and i know that Jay, xEik, James, Jason, and probably George use it at least for a substantial part of their browsing, but it would be interesting to know how many use it as the sole or primary one. i would say that 98 percent of my browsing is done with Opera, and most of the rest is just playing around trying out new versions of other companies' browsers to see if they've come up with anything useful or at least interesting. [rarely do they have anything useful that they didn't copy, badly, from Opera ;) ]
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[Task]

xEik: No problem logging in at all. Wickedly fast fix, there! You've been a mod for, what, a day? And already you're making improvements. In places that I didn't even know there were improvements to be made! 8 )

[xEik]

Well, fast is how we like it in WipeoutZone, isn't it. ;)
Am I right to assume that you use autologin and you didn't need to enter your password again today?
I'm still pondering if I should post that sticky (just in case people with strict setups for cookies had some problem to login).

PRACTICE LEADS TO PERFECTION !

[Lance]

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i, uh..., sort of sneakily decided to exploit xEik's presence since he has more time than infox to investigate these things, and besides, xEik's an Opera fan! :D

but yes. good work!
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[Task]

Totally correct. I just opened the page, and I was logged in. This is after booting the computer from cold, I turned it off before I left hours ago, the old cookies would have expired. So I doubt that any kind of note is necessary.

I have the coolest avatar ever.

[xEik]

Glad you like it. 8)

[Lance]

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Jay! i would never in a million years been able to foresee your choice of avatars! ;)
and it's a nice one!
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[xEik]

Now that Task has his avatar I can get myself the AG-5Y5 one I use in the phpBB.com forums. :D

[Lance]

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that makes the AG-S the popularity champion amongst the mods with 40 percent of the vote. that proves that love does not always go to the fastest :)
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[FoxZero]

as far as your poll goes lance, i use opera 7 for browsing 100% of the time. the only time you will ever see me in another browser is when im checking my own code for compatability.

[AmishRobot]

xeik: I'm on Opera 7, and while visiting the forums several times a day while this topic was active, at no time did I have to log back in. Just thought you might like to know, even if it is a bit late. :) I do have it set to accept all cookies right now, because I've been too lazy to clean it out and set the accepted domains.

I had no idea it could track a session via the URL. That's pretty cool.

BTW, congrats on being promoted to mod, good job, and great avatar!

[xEik]

I had no idea it could track a session via the URL. That's pretty cool.
Yes the developpers did it for those users who never ever accept a cookie (not even session cookies that are only stored in your computer until you shut down the browser).

Oh, and thanks for the kind words. :D