Posted by Colin McKinnon on 09/30/05 11:53

Jay wrote:

> Hello,
> Is it possible to have session management differentiate within
> browsers on one pc? For example, if you have two browsers on the same
> shopping site, and one browser adds to the cart, the other browser
> should still show an empty cart. I don't know if this is possible,
> since I have done testing on amazon.com, and have seen that when I add
> an item to the cart on one browser, then open a 2nd browser window, go
> to amazon.com, the cart will contain the item I added from the 1st
> browser window. Any ideas?
>
> -Jay
> (patel at cs dot utk dot edu)

The short answer is no.

There is (AFAIK) no way way to differentiate between browser windows other
than on the basis of the code they hold. This is ingrained into the
structure of HTTP, HTML and browser technology, although having tried to
solve this problem myself I think it would be a very useful extension.

You could use the use_trans_sid option to get the browser to reference
different sessions but this (IME) doesn't work very reliably.

It is possible to subdivide the session but you still have the problem of
maintaining a reference to the sub-part in the browser window. My form
editor PfP Studio (http://pfp-studio.sourceforge.net) uses this method.

HTH

C.

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