Forum session login/timeouts

[john_cornicello__retired_]

We've had some changes made for session timeouts. Are people still having to constantly log-in throughout the day? Today I've managed to stay logged in without any forum activity for up to 3 hours or slightly longer. Has it improved for others? The login session should now be about 4 hours. It was supposed to be two hours previously, but for some accounts it might have been shorter.

John

[Jesseham-jc1rvC]

I guess I should have enclosed that in <sarcasm> </sarcasm> ?

[Kath-H]

and possibly decorated it heavily with smilies, winkies and a dollop of Comic Sans

I'm afraid many people's sense of humour is wearing a bit thin.

[Guest]

It's the non-stop, rapid-fire repartee from PJ that keeps me creased up!    

[Phillip_M_Jones]

John Joslin wrote:

It's the non-stop, rapid-fire repartee from PJ that keeps me creased up!    

And constant jabs at me from you, that keep the juices flowing.

[Guest]

Yes, I was going to channel the depths of hell to unleash the required flame that I would have generated had I not seen the <sarcasm> tags.

Actually, I am finding this whole thing rather amusing, I do admit. Watching and participating in a large number of forum flames where everyone is venting so much can be entertaining.

But I'd still rather just get new/old forums.

[john_cornicello__retired_]

Jesseham wrote:

I guess I should have enclosed that in <sarcasm> </sarcasm> ?

FWIW, I laughed when I read it

[Kath-H]

Me too, nicely put

[john_cornicello__retired_]

Thanks for the reports.

I don't quite understand the situation totally myself. On Web Crossing they had a permanent cookie. They never mentioned anything about keeping a session active or things like that. It seemed that you went to the site, the cookie said, yes, you are who you are, and you were in. Here I keep hearing about sessions being open. If you click on Browse in the user bar above and select People, and then click on Show Online Only you will see what I consider an "odd" number. Right now it says there are 1,150 people online. I like to think that the forums are popular, but that seems like a lot. I saw another report that claimed 80,000 unique visitors (not all logged in, many as "guest" users) in a recent 24 hour period.

Anyway, it sounds like there are performance issues with keeping the sessions open for long time that we didn't have or know about in the old system.

On the other (FuseTalk) side, the situation was more like it is here. If you didn't do anything in the forum for a couple of hours you had to log in again.

As I understand it now, the four hour time should be reset any time you click on something or navigate around in the Forum. I have not been able to duplicate the situation of getting logged out while trying to reply. Please, if you can, provide a step by step scenario where that will happen.

I'll keep working towards the best balance of session time vs performance.

Thanks!

John

[D__McCahill]

John Cornicello wrote:

Thanks for the reports.

I don't quite understand the situation totally myself. On Web Crossing they had a permanent cookie. They never mentioned anything about keeping a session active or things like that. It seemed that you went to the site, the cookie said, yes, you are who you are, and you were in. Here I keep hearing about sessions being open.

I agree that you don't want permanent sessions. Ideally, the cookie should just recognize you, and log you in. Pressure the Jive people to go to that route. They can still kill sessions after an hour, let alone four, so long as any activity on the forum as a guest checks for the cookie and automatically logs you back in. It is the process of having to relog that is annoying.

John Cornicello wrote:

Please, if you can, provide a step by step scenario where that will happen.    

I'll try to give my experience yesterday. Normally this computer has been very nice since you went to the 4 hour window. Not always logged in during the morning, but once I had, I would be safe all day.

Last night I didn't turn the computer off, and came back soon after work started and was quite pleased to see myself logged in still. I read a couple messages, and then posted to one. I may have gone to another message, or not (can't remember) but fairly soon I came back to make a minor edit to that posting. The first one I made today, if you need to look it up.

I browse around for a bit, and have no idea when I was logged off. I just know that when I wanted to post again in another thread, I found that I was now guest, and couldn't.

It seems to me that the software must check at random times for session length. That allowed me a few minutes to play under my old session, and then it decided that 16 hours was way too much fun for one person, and logged me out.

PS: An idea Jive might try that another system I use runs is: when a session has been inactive, a window pops up asking if you want to continue it. You have one minute to check yes, and then it logs you off, and sends you back to the home page. That might be better than what is happening here.

[john_cornicello__retired_]

One thing to note is that the "Welcome, your name in the Jive user bar (not the one at the top of the page that doesn't have a comma in it) could still look like you are logged in because the page hasn't been refreshed since the last time you landed on it (yesterday). But on your next click it should change to "Login/Register," which would not be immediately obvious unless you were looking at that part of the page. You would then be moving around as a guest user until you did something that required a login, such as posting a message.

[Guest]

of course, a session IS NOT a cookie.

does everyone understand that?

if jive relies on session data that's probably why logouts are required. it could get REAAAAALLY messy REAAAAALLY fast if everyone had permanant sessions. even a 4 hour session is a really long time to retain data that might not be needed "right now".

[Phillip_M_Jones]

dave milbut wrote:

of course, a session IS NOT a cookie.

does everyone understand that?

if jive relies on session data that's probably why logouts are required. it could get REAAAAALLY messy REAAAAALLY fast if everyone had permanant sessions. even a 4 hour session is a really long time to retain data that might not be needed "right now".

You keep saying that. A session of it self is not a Cookie. But Adobe send what is called a session cookie to identify you to the system for whatever time they have designated as time for the session.

There are two methods you can use at least in SM and possibly in FF.

One is to go to cookie manager. In cookie manager you can view where the cookies come from wether they are Permanent, have a expriration date in the future. Or whether they are session cookies.

you can also use webDeveloper extion to add a web developer  tool bar. one of the items it has is also a cookie manager as well. But you edit cookies if necessary.

[Guest]

pj i've asked you before DON'T TRY TO EXPLAIN WHAT I'M SAYING. I'M saying exactly what i mean. you're apparently talking out your nether regions.

[Guest]

I had a lenghty detailed reply typed out above, and i went to hit the "quote" button, it popped the quote in the middle of the reply. i hit CRTL-Z and it DELETED the most detailed part of the reply, explaining the difference between cookies and sessions and why they're not even close to being the same thing. piece of SHIETE software.

later.

[Phillip_M_Jones]

John Cornicello wrote:

Thanks for the reports.

I don't quite understand the situation totally myself. On Web Crossing they had a permanent cookie. They never mentioned anything about keeping a session active or things like that. It seemed that you went to the site, the cookie said, yes, you are who you are, and you were in. Here I keep hearing about sessions being open. If you click on Browse in the user bar above and select People, and then click on Show Online Only you will see what I consider an "odd" number. Right now it says there are 1,150 people online. I like to think that the forums are popular, but that seems like a lot. I saw another report that claimed 80,000 unique visitors (not all logged in, many as "guest" users) in a recent 24 hour period.

Anyway, it sounds like there are performance issues with keeping the sessions open for long time that we didn't have or know about in the old system.

On the other (FuseTalk) side, the situation was more like it is here. If you didn't do anything in the forum for a couple of hours you had to log in again.

As I understand it now, the four hour time should be reset any time you click on something or navigate around in the Forum. I have not been able to duplicate the situation of getting logged out while trying to reply. Please, if you can, provide a step by step scenario where that will happen.

I'll keep working towards the best balance of session time vs performance.

Thanks!

John

I don't know that it was a defect or not in WebX they actually issued a permanent Cookie that was set when you used your USER-ID and clicked Remeber me.

In Mozilla web browser Products there is an extension you can get called Web Develope That inserts a Tool Bar. I've described in another thread the items it can view Edit.

In viewing the cookies there was a Adobe Forum Cookie that was not a session cookie it was permanent cookie  with a 20 year  expiration. This cookie would be destroyed when you logged  out and new one was issued. But as long as you were signed signed in and didn't log out, you were login in even through computer shutdowns for days at a time.

If we have to deal with sessions they should at least last last 48-72 hours. And they should not go out in the middle of typing a response. I've had that happen several times. And session timeouts times have been as little as 4 hours.

[john_cornicello__retired_]

PjonesCET wrote:

I don't know that it was a defect or not in WebX they actually issued a permanent Cookie that was set when you used your USER-ID and clicked Remeber me.

There was no "remember me" option in Web Crossing. You signed in, you got the cookie. No options. You had to remember to sign out if you were using a publicly accessible computer. And sometimes it took two or three clicks on the sign out link before it actually took.

Please list the steps necessary to make/let it sign you out in the middle of composing a message. Does it happen in the middle of typing? Or does it happen if you type part of the response, go away for a couple of hours, and then come back and finish typing the response and then try to send it?

Thanks!

[Phillip_M_Jones]

When you first signed on after getting your user name and password there was a window that came up asking for your User ID and password and it had a remember me check box. Now if you signed in using your email which you could after the first time the window with remember me never came up again.

In fact the only way it ever showed up is when you sign in the very first time or if you remove all your adobe cookies and started over.

there were even directions how to do so after the first time they tried a switch over, back when you had to sign in for every message.

But that was then now is now.

[john_cornicello__retired_]

WebCrossing did not use any adobe.com cookies. It used its own adobeforums.com cookie. There was only one page to sign up, it did not send you off to Adobe.com to use your Adobe ID (which is where the remember me check box is).

But, as you say, that system is gone.

Here is more info from Jive on the session time out...

The session time out is controlled by the application server, but there is a cookie on the user's browser that ties them to that session. If for any reason they'd like a new session they can delete that cookie. This would make it appear to the app server that they're a new user, and require them to login.

I'm still trying to figure out your getting logged out when trying to post. Please let me know if the scenario I posted (start a message, go away for some time, then come back to finish it) is a possibility.

John

[Claudio_González1]

John Cornicello wrote:

I'm still trying to figure out your getting logged out when trying to post. Please let me know if the scenario I posted (start a message, go away for some time, then come back to finish it) is a possibility.

John

John, this is the last time this happened to me:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/424214?tstart=30

and I was so angry because I was very short of time when I first wrote that message, so I wrote it in all very quickly in one go, with no stops at all. And when I finished and clicked on the Post Message button without even a quick look back at what I had written, I received an error message (don't remember which), and I saw that I was no longer logged in, and had completely lost all I had written. So I'm sorry but no, your theory doesn't fit this one case.

[john_cornicello__retired_]

Hi Claudio.

Are you using any browser tweaks to change forum behavior or to change how cookies are handled?

Thanks!

John

[Phillip_M_Jones]

John Cornicello wrote:

Hi Claudio.

Are you using any browser tweaks to change forum behavior or to change how cookies are handled?

Thanks!

John

John This is Phil. I can answer the question about Altering Cookies.

I use a Mozilla product (Not crowing about browser used just identifying for John what is used).

I have a an extension WebDeveloper Toolbar.

I can open its Cookie Manager and alter cookies if I need to. I've tried to various session cookies from Adobe Forums and it makes no difference Adobeforums overwrites the cookies with new ones.

On another Front: This is the window I saw on WebX to sign in the first time:

I've altered the Username box to not give away information:

Notice the remember Me checkbox. Once checked and loginin we never had to see this again.

This box is what I see when I click the login/register button at the top of the message box, New, your stuff , history, Browse and so on.

Folks don't rasie eyebrows, groan. I am trying to give John information if he wants to ignore it or laugh at it that's up to him. I am trying to be helpful

[Guest]

I can understand logging folks out in a specified timeframe for *inactivity*, but to be logged out while actively surfing the forums drives me nuts!  I've never been to a forum that does that!  I cannot find a  rhyme or reason for it.  Some times I stay logged in (like today, when I booted up my laptop, I was still logged in from yesterday.  Firefox updated itself, and I was still logged in.  I opened a new tab, went to forum comments and noted that I was logged out!!  I had already been surfing the Lounge and the Photography forum and was logged in for those.

I am on WinXP home editions, SP3, Firefox 3.0.10 and I only have forecast fox plugin installed.  I don't have any developer tools, adblock (though I am going to install that!) or other such things installed.

[~graffiti]

I can leave my work computer on all night, close the browser or leave it open (doesn't seem to matter) come back in in the morning and still be logged in (today for instance).

But I can be here during the day using the forums and be logged out two to three times.

I can leave my computer on or shut it down at home all day then come home and still be logged in. Then again, I start using the forums and get logged out a couple of times.

Then other times, it's completely the opposite...Go figure.

[adobe-admin]

Sorry Phil, but Web Crossing did not use that sign in page. Look at it, it is asking for your Adobe ID. Web Crossing had its own ID and lived on a completely separate server system hosted by WebCrossing with no ties to Adobe.com in any way at all. The URLs for the old WebX Forums were at www.adobeforums.com. And it just offered a very plain sign in page that asked for your name (First and Last) and password. There was even text under those boxes that said there was no relation to your Adobe ID and that you had to register separately in the U2U Forums.

Between January and April there was an option in the Web Crossing forums to associate your WebX account with an Adobe ID. If you clicked on that you got the screen you posted below because at that point you were logging into your Adobe ID account to verify that you were the same person on both systems.

But that page was not used to log into Web Crossing.

John

PjonesCET wrote:

On another Front: This is the window I saw on WebX to sign in the first time:

I've altered the Username box to not give away information:

Notice the remember Me checkbox. Once checked and loginin we never had to see this again.

This box is what I see when I click the login/register button at the top of the message box, New, your stuff , history, Browse and so on.

[Phillip_M_Jones]

Well that what's came up the last time we had an aborted attempt to a merging on web Crossing.

You should know what should have been there. You were a part of the system. So I'll not argue the point. I accept your opinion.

All I know they was somewhere you choose remember me which set some type of cookie on the old WebX system.

Anyway it does show what I see everytime I have to login in the new system.

You wouldn't happen to have a image of the old window would you?