BuzzerBeater Forums

here are the standard set of questions i am trying to get users to answer. Its especially frustrating when i get answers to only one of them, for instance "old.buzzerbeater.com works and buzzerbeater.com doesn't".

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I am trying to help figure out what the problem is with some of the users, to do so, I need your help to answer some questions to help narrow down where the problem is. So if you could try these various things, and tell me what the result is, it will be of great assistance in diagnosing this problem, because we cannot manage to reproduce it on any of our computers.

1) try to log into the new site (www.buzzebeater.com) and the old site (old.buzzerbeater.com). Does one work? or both?

2) what browser and operating system are you using, please give the exact version. You can usually find this information in the menu of the program in something like help>about X, where X is your browser's name

3) try to log onto both sites on another computer. Ideally this should be a computer that is using the same internet connection as the one that is giving you problems. I am trying to understand if this problem is connection specific or computer specific. Does your ability to log into the old or new site change when you use a different computer. Please tell me whether a different computer works/doesn't work, and whether that computer was using a different connection to the internet or the same.

4) try to download and use a different browser than you are using. There are at least 4 different browsers to try.

Firefox (getfirefox.com)

IE (installed by default by microsoft on windows machines, though you can update it at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx

Opera (http://www.opera.com/)

Chrome (http://www.google.com/chrome)

Does changing browsers let you login to either site that you weren't able to login before? Or maybe it makes you unable to login to one that you were able to before.

So i decided to try to figure out what are the reasons some browsers block some cookies. I stumbled upon some articles that suggest that some versions of IE block cookies from websites that don't have a privacy policy published... and by privacy policy I mean this odd assortment of 3 letter codes that don't mean anything to me...
"CP=\'IDC DSP COR ADM DEVi TAIi PSA PSD IVAi IVDi CONi HIS OUR IND CNT\'")

you can read about all the glorious technical details here
http://aspnetresources.com/blog/frames_webforms_and_rejected_cookies.aspx

anyway, the bottom line is I have added this to our site now I believe, and I'm hoping this will let IE and other browsers accept our cookies and let people login... but i'm not sure cause I can't reproduce the problem myself, so i've sent out a lot of emails asking people if this has solved their problem and am waiting to hear back.

debugging this is slow going because of this time delay in feedback.

update:

So after posting in an asp.net forum about the problem, i got a helpful response suggesting that when a user has his or her date/time set incorrectly, it can cause some browsers to believe the cookie has expired and so fail to save it.

"We had a problem similar to yours and this was due to the date of the user's PC, when logging in to our application it creates a cookie with a lifetime of one day, users who had this problem had the date of the PC one or more days ahead, for this reason the cookie was not created, we solved this problem by increasing the lifetime of the cookie."

I have confirmed that having the date set incorrectly causes this problem in at least IE, and i have one user report that fixing their time zone allowed them to login with Chrome.

I hope there is more feedback so I can know whether this more generally what the problem is for most people.

so now i have gotten in some more reports, and definitely there are still others for which this explanation is not the entire explanation, because they say their date and times are correct but still can't login.

I wish i had a better way of assessing how many users this was really affecting in a dynamic way, so that I could track how big these various fixes are in fixing the problem.

Maybe a poll asking each user if he had an error while trying to log in???
It would appear in the first page after the log-in,the BuzzerBeater one...This could help you with this..I've seen use of this kind of servey in another browser based game and it was a success..

- - I wish i had a better way of assessing how many users this was really affecting in a dynamic way, so that I could track how big these various fixes are in fixing the problem.

In this context you do not talk about the problem that I always have when logging in and always have write my name and password twice to make it through and come in on the page?


Last edited by Unkel at 11/26/2009 11:14:14 AM

In this context you do not talk about the problem that I always have when logging in and always have write my name and password twice to make it through and come in on the page?

I don't have that problem here, but I do have it on eBay (only when using IE). It has something to do with cookies, but I have never taken the time to figure out what the problem is since I get in with the second attempt. So, perhaps it's a cookie thing for you, too.

Edit: probably --> perhaps

Last edited by GM-WallyOop at 11/28/2009 8:10:25 AM

- perhaps so ...

this thread looks perhaps relevant to this problem, it was pointed out to me on an asp.net forum. There is a lot of different sounding stuff going on in here.. I need to read it again more carefully, but there are some client side suggestions and a clear admission that IE can do some screwy things with cookies

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/iewebdevelopment/thread/2d989cdd-7d88-46af-bedf-b87a0cb6695c/