Re: lynx-dev lynx, hotmail, and cookies - an update

[Kim DeVaughn]

On Sun, Aug 15, 1999, Klaus Weide (address@hidden) said:
|
| On Sun, 15 Aug 1999, Kim DeVaughn wrote:
| > Of course, adding:
| >
| > COOKIE_LOOSE_INVALID_DOMAINS:.passport.com,.msn.com
| >
| > to my lynx.cfg obviates the need for all the manual interaction, but I
| > thought I'd go thru all the gory details in case one of our cookie-guru's
| > wants to look into *why* so many (TEN, count 'em, 10) prompts/replies are
| > required.
|
| That's easy - many invalid cookies => many "invalid cookie" prompts.

True ... *if* we're actually talking about that many actual cookies.

That is possible, I suppose, but for many (most, really) of the "y"
responses to the prompt, it really doesn't seem like there is any
traffic between lynx and the site ... more like lynx has processed a
bit more of a single cookie, finds something "invalid", and asks about
acceptance.  Then process a bit more of the cookie as a result of the
y(es) response, finds something else it doesn't like, and repeats the
query/response cycle.

Maybe I'm completely wrong, but that's what it "feels" like, since there
is absolutely *no* on-screen indication that each "y" response is bringing
up a new cookie ... no blinking of the ststus line, no change to *anything*
on-screen, etc.


| Sure, the prompts could be more obvious/more informative/more recognizable.

Just *some* indication that the response had been seen, and acted upon
would help (eg, erase/blank the statusline msg that was responded to, so
there would at least be a "flicker" if the next prompt/msg was identical
to the previous one.  Etc.


| > Anyway ... I've setup an account/mailbox at hotmail.com for lynx testing,
| > if anyone else wants to use it, and made a trace of all the above nonesense
| > (beginning with account entry, and ending when the actual hotmail page is
| > rendered).
| >
| > The trace is available at 
<http://www.best.com/~kimdv/lynx/hotmail_trace.gz>,
| > and the account/passwd data is embedded.
|
| I haven't looked inside, but you serve the file in a broken way, note the
| Content-Type below.

Oh, I just tossed the file in an empty directory in my web-space (since I
don't really have any web-pages set up).  Normally, I'd have put it in my
anon ftp dir, but since this *is* lynx-dev, I figured it'd be more natural
to d(ownload) it with lynx ... :-) ...

FWIW, I couldn't make much sense out of the trace, in relation to my
comments above, about whether each y(es) response was in fact for a
separate cookie, since I haven't studied the cookie code, so I was hoping
for some feedback as to whether what I was/am seeing was normal/proper
cookie processing (and thus just a result of MS foolish nonsense).

/kim