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11/6/2008 7:25 AM

	girdle66
55 posts

Sessions are shared across browsers? Or something...

Hello,

I am putting together a website and seem to be encountering some issues with sessions being shared from one browser to the next. Please follow these steps to recreate:

1: Go to the main page: www.biddingrenter.com

2: Leave the first browser window open and then visit this link in a seperate tab or browser: http://www.biddingrenter.com/Default.aspx?UserInquiryID=c6d0a967-5310-444a-a541-887072b6f46c This link should show the status of an open inquiry but instead, assuming the first browser is still open, it shows the main page.

3. Close the two browsers/tabs opened in steps 1 & 2.

4. Re-open the link mentioned in step 2. Now you should see a different page with the status of the open inquiry.

Is there something I can do to fix this? Maybe a flag in the web.config or something? I've tried some things, but with no luck.

Note that this site is currently using an older version of VWG. (6.0.4 I think.) I can update if you think it may help...

Maybe I need to have the inquiry status page (step #2) not redirect to BasePage.wgx? Would that fix it?

Thanks for all you guys do, excellent product!
Andrew

11/6/2008 12:22 PM

	palli
11189 posts

Re: Sessions are shared across browsers? Or something...

Hi !

Seems to me that this has the exact same explaination as my reply in this thread http://www.visualwebgui.com/Forums/tabid/364/forumid/-1/threadid/16511/scope/posts/Default.aspx

That is, opening the same form twice or more within the same browser thread, will only fire the form's load event the first time it's loaded.

Palli

Páll Björnsson - Visual WebGui support team - Email: support@visualwebgui.com

11/7/2008 8:58 AM

	girdle66
55 posts

Re: Sessions are shared across browsers? Or something...

I agree, we seem to have the same issue.

I think I can also change my code to accomodate this, but I am still confused as to what causes this problem. When a user has two different browsers open they will have two different sessions on the server, completely independent of each other. So how on earth does VWG determine that the two sessions are from the same client and that the second session doesn't need to fire form load? What criteria does the VWG engine use to determine that two different requests/sessions are from the same user? (Surely it's not done by IP/MAC address, as the IP/MAC address you see on the server may very well be that of a proxy server and not the actual client. That could cause problems...)

I'd appreciate some clarification if anybody has the time...

Thanks again!
Andrew

11/7/2008 9:11 AM

	palli
11189 posts

Re: Sessions are shared across browsers? Or something...

This is both right and wrong :-)

It is not VWG that is the judge in this case. This has to do with how the browser program (Internet Explorer or Firefox) does things.

I did reference an article about this in some other forum thread on the same issue. In that article it's explained that for each browser THREAD, there is a session. Firefox behaves in that way that it runs ALL it's windows and tabs within the same single thread, while IE is supposed to run one thread for each window, meaning that all tabs within the same IE window will belong to the same thread, but other IE windows will belong to another. That means that IE will allocate a new thread, en therefore fire your form's load event, fore every window opened, but only once for each window.

This does not seem to be the case for all users. I don't know what settings makes IE behave like that, but for some users it does seem that IE is behaving the same as FF. Could be different between IE version, I don't know.

I did my testing with IE7 on Vista Ultimate, and in my case it was obvious that IE was allocating a new thread for each new window. This becomes most obvious if you have an authentication form for your app. In my case I was asked for new credentials for every new IE7 window open, while all FF3 windows got along with the same login session.

I had this discussion with Itzik at Gizmox for a short time ago, and as I understood him, then he thought that new IE window should not request new credentials, so this does not seem to be the same for all users. Like I said, it could be different between IE versions, donno, but my IE7 does behave like that at least.

Palli

Páll Björnsson - Visual WebGui support team - Email: support@visualwebgui.com