I posted this a couple of months ago, and apparently bored everyone to tears. But I thought I'd try again - it's driving me crazy.

This is really two questions. I just want to know if there is something I can do to my cookie settings to change how this happens.

1. When I move from either FTMiles or FTTravel to the other, using the links at the top, ALL the lightbulbs are lit on the second choice.

2. Whenever I open a thread that has an external hyperlink in it (you know, like Click here to see bonus codes)if I click on that link (which opens in a new browser window), and then go back to the original thread listing in the forum, now ALL the bulbs are dimmed.Actually all the bulbs are dimmed for the entire FTMiles or FTTravel - wherever I am. It's like the browser window that opens when I click on the hyperlink resets all the cookies.

This is driving me nuts. Any pointers?

svp- sometimes all my lights are on. sometimes they're all off. Ihave no problem w/ other BBs, just FT... in Miles, Travel... everywhere!

IE 5.5 on Win2K here.

We've been aware of the lightbulb problem for a while, but we haven't figured out a solution for it that works with the multiple Forum model of FlyerTalk...

Thanks Dan. Guess I'll just grind my teeth.

Sorry to ressurect this, but I have a similar problem and I need to let off steam ...

I use my laptop from work (through a proxy server on our corprate WAN) and from home. The lightbulb function works independently in the two places - in other words it seems to be linked to the IP-address or something, and not to cookies on my laptop.

Every other forum/bulletin board I use has no problem and recognises me (using cookies I guess) wherever I log on. Why does FT have to be different? This isn't rocket science is it? Surely the answer is to have a "sign-in" function so that you can keep track of the last access time, and hence the lightbulbs.

And another niggle - there is something wrong with the way you interact with proxy servers - I have to do a refresh every time I load a page through my corporate proxy if it is still in the cache, even though I have my browser set to "check every time". Again everything works fine with every other board I use.

Perhaps you could talk to the guys over at PPrune to see how they do it?

Sorry for the whinge - FT is still a great resource, but it can be irritating sometimes!

That's what the cookie is supposed to do (whether or not it is seems to be the problem): it tracks the last time you've viewed an FT page so it knows what to highlight as far as new postings.

You have your browser set to not cache, but is your proxy server set to not cache? Your browser is only displaying what your proxy is letting through. We've gotten caching reports like these before, usually from universities and larger networks, and it seems that their proxies were holding on to pages from highly trafficked sites such as ours.

I'm not certain because I am also on a large corporate network and the proxy is in another continent. However, I believe it is set to "check automatically for updates". It certainly works absolutely fine with other BBs, such as http://www.pprune.org/forums/ .

The "sign in by cookie" also works differently from PPrune. On PPrune I don't have to reenter my userid & password when posting - the cookie does it automatically, but on FT I do.

The lightbulb function is certainly not working as you describe. It seems that somehow it is setting a cookie on the proxy, not on my machine when I connect from work. Is that possible?

.

But does that bulletin board get as much traffic as FT does? From what (little) I understand about proxy servers, some hold pages for sites they get a lot of requests for, in order to reduce load. I do know that there's nothing on FT set to cache; when a new post is made/edited, it's written directly to the flat file and viewable right away.

Have you gone to the "Preferences" link ( http://www.flyertalk.com/forumcgi/ub...ction=setprefs ) and deleted, then reset your cookies for each board? It _should_ clear out any old/corrupted cookies and reset them with new ones that are supposed to stay on your machine for a year.

That could be possible... I'll drop the UBB folks a line and see what they think about that.

Historically, we've gotten the majority of cookie & caching problems from computers behind network proxies, rather than at home (although we did have some problems with home users on the roadrunner network).


UPDATE:

Infopop got back to me about the proxy/cookie issue, and here's what they had to say:

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Yes - firewalls and proxy servers that strip or block cookies are pretty common - it may be blocking client-side Javascript as well.

First step is to have the user check this article:

http://infopopfaq.infopop.net/0/Open...9&m=6980943942

And if they can configure the browser at work well enough to accomodate posting from there, then we found our trouble.

If they can post from home without trouble then we have a pretty good idea that the firewall at work is stripping cookies.
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[This message has been edited by dan at WebFlyer (edited 08-30-2002).]