LJ query

[venta]

If I'm logged into LJ, and I open a new browser window, I appear to be logged in in the new window, too. And if I log out from there, it logs me out in both windows.

This didn't used to happen. And I'd like it not to. Have I inadvertently checked some option somewhere which I now can't find, or has something else changed ?

(I'm using IE/Windows 2K)

Comments

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, insert free insults about IE here.

However, just now it's quite happily opening me unlogged-in windows again. Which may be broken, but it's also What I Want.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Well, insert free insults about IE here.

It's not IE's fault, what it's doing is sensible browser behaviour.

Session cookies are supposed to apply for the lifetime of the browser instance, because it's far more common that the Right Thing is for "open in new window" to preserve your session info than it is for "open in new window" to discard it. As Chris says below, starting a second browser instance discards the data if that's what you want, but "open in new window" doesn't do that for good reasons.

For example, suppose I'm on a slow connection, so I want to "open in new window" all the posts on my friends list and then start reading them while they load. According to you I should hit a login screen for each one that is friends-locked, just because it's a different window. According to Bill Gates I shouldn't, because the new window is in the same instance of the browser.

Logging out causing a logout in both windows kind of depends on the semantics of "logging out" from the site in question. With websites, "log out" tends to mean "I am no longer using this site. So don't let anybody anywhere who is claiming to be me use it any more", because websites communicate in a disjointed way that historically has led to some highly dodgy session-ID models, and being able to know you've shut everything down was useful. With something stream-based like telnet, it makes more sense for "log out" to mean by default "I'm done with this connection but I might have others I'm still using".

But whichever Livejournal does in cases where you have multiple instances of your browser with different session cookies, it's LJ rather than the browser which has made the decision.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was never expecting "open in a new window" to log me out. It was multiple browser instances I was complaining about.