Sessions and Firefox

For a long time I’ve been using session variables to control what appears on my web site (front end), depending on whether the user is logged into the manager (backend). For example, a snippet checks $_SESSION[’mgrValidated’] and $_SESSION[’mgrInternalKey’] to identify a manager user, and insert extra content into the web page.

This has suddenly stopped working for me, and after tearing my hair out for an hour, I tried it in IE and it works fine! So it seems to me that a recent Firefox update has changed the way things work?

Firefox:
If I view the site in one tab while being logged into the Manager in another tab, the web site sees values in $_SESSION[’webValidated’] and $_SESSION[’webInternalKey’], but not $_SESSION[’mgrValidated’] and $_SESSION[’mgrInternalKey’].
Conversely, a module in the back end sees $_SESSION[’mgrValidated’] and $_SESSION[’mgrInternalKey’], but not $_SESSION[’webValidated’] and $_SESSION[’webInternalKey’].

IE:
Both frontend snippet and backend module can see all 4 session variables. This is how it used to work in Firefox too.

Does anyone have any clues/information/ideas to help me with this problem?

Have you tried deactivating every extension you have installed? I’ve found that occasionally these have have unexpected effects after an update; for example, I’ve had problems with both Evernote and X-marks stopping cookies working.

The only extension I have that wasn’t included with MODx is EasyPoll, but I haven’t made any changes to that recently so I’m sure that’s not the issue.

I think he meant Firefox extensions.

/cool --> http://bit.ly/nshXa

Quote from: mrhaw at Jun 29, 2009, 03:04 AM

I think he meant Firefox extensions.

D’oh - sorry. I disabled all Firefox extensions, but the problem remains.

This is still a problem for me - I’ve managed to work around it by ensuring I’m logged into both frontend and backend - but that’s not ideal and it’s still niggling. Thinking it is a Firefox issue, I upgraded from v3.0.13 to v3.5.2 but it made no difference. I’ve tried disabling all Firefox addins, clearing cookies and cache, all to no effect. I just tested in Firefox 3.0.13 under Ubuntu, and that works fine too - it’s only a problem in Firefox under Windows. (And it seems only a problem for me )

Are you sure you didn’t get the subdomains mixed up? like mydomain.com/manager and www.mydomain.com? I’ve tripped over that one several times, until I got sick of it and set up the .htaccess file to rewrite all requests to www.sottwell.com, and made sure my browser’s bookmarks were all updated.

Susan you’re a genius! I was about to add another post after trying on 3 other FF/Win machines - which all worked. It turns out I was logged into the manager using www. and frontend without www.
Thank you thank you thank you!