Printing website - cookies

[E Tolstoj]

Hi All,

I didn't find any related posts in newsgroup history; if I should have
searched better, feel free to correct me.

There's this problem in IE6 (don't know about other IE's, so know the
problem doesn't occur in Mozilla) that feels to me as a bug - I'm curious
about anyone having experienced this too:

I master a website for an elementary school, and the only way for visitors
to access all content is by having a cookie set (not important how one gets
that cookie).
At the request of any "private" article or image, the website checks the
availability of the cookie - if it fails the visitor gets either a default
error-article or a default error-image.

Now this all works fine. Until you try to print an article containing
images.
All "private" images in the article turn out, on paper, as the default
error-image.
As if IE chooses to retrieve the images in the article *again* right before
printing - although it already has them in cache - and forgets to add the
cookie-information to that request.

I can't find any other explanation. The problem is easily reconstructable
here, all parents using IE6 have the same problem.
Does anyone here have a clue? Is it a known bug? Will IE7 send cookies whie
printing or reuse images from cache?

E Tolstoj

 

[E Tolstoj]

Hi E,
I am only guessing, but it seems to me to be only logical that the page
would be requested with the Print command so that the latest version of
any dynamic content (asp - active server pages) is printed.

I have to disagree on that. Ofcourse pages can be dynamic, but when a user
sees a page and decides he wants a printed copy of it, I'm sure he doesn't
mean "a printed copy of whatever the site makes of the page now" - but in
fact the exact page he's watching. Imagine there's some kind of counter on
the page that tells me I'm the 1,000,000th visitor... I would like to have
that printed! Darn... as soon as I print it the printout sais I'm visitor
number 1,000,003!

Try adding the article to your favorites and making it available off line,
then openening it and trying printing it then.

Fortunately even that fails. (I say fortunately because I wouldn't have
wanted that instruction on the site). I am trying to make a very small site
to show you what happens... it doesn't happen in all cases where cookies are
needed; possibly just when the site redirects (I use names like im564.jpg,
on IIS I trap the 404 and redirect it to an ASP-file that checks the cookies
and finds the image - possibly the Print-functionality in IE does send
cookies again when retrieving images, just not when there is a redirect...
I'll look further)

E Tolstoj

 

[Jan Il]

Hi E Tolstoj

You don't mention the version of Windows you are using, which you should
always do when posting to newsgroups.

There are often webpages written by the webmaster or creator that will cause
problems with printing, so, why not do a print screen. or use a 3rd party
screen capture program.

Check the free ones here.
Free screen capture programs
http://www.freewarefiles.com/cat_3_40_Screen-Capture.html

I use SnagIt 8.0, which is not free, but, it gives me a wide variety of
features to work with. They have a free trial.
http://www.techsmith.com/download/trials.asp

Hope this helps.

Jan
MS MVP - Windows IE/OE [DTS/AumHa]
Smiles are meant to be shared,
that's why they're so contagious.

Replies are posted only to the newsgroup for the benefit or other readers.
How to make a good newsgroup post:
http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

 

[Rob Parsons]

Hi E,
I am only guessing, but it seems to me to be only logical that the page
would be requested with the Print command so that the latest version of any
dynamic content (asp - active server pages) is printed.

Try adding the article to your favorites and making it available off line,
then openening it and trying printing it then.