Up until now, you had to manually type in your username and password for the first message posted during any browser session. This problem is fixed for new members who join after November 23rd.
Current members will have to go to the
Preferences page (a link to this page also appears on the top right of the Forums Summary page) and select
yes on the line where it says, "Store Username and Password in browser memory for 1 year," then click on
Submit Preferences. The next time you post a message should be the last time you have to type your username and password. For a year, at least.
Technical information follows for those interested.
--Percy
It turned out to be a Y2K problem. The JavaScript Date.getYear() variously returns either a 2 or 4 digit year, depending upon the browser. The forum code checked if the year was less than 1900, and if it was it assumed it was a 2 digit year and added 1900 to it. Internet Explorer returns a 2 digit year. Once we reached the year 2000 it was adding 100 too little and so the cookies received expiration dates in the year 1901. Any cookie with an expired date is deleted, and naturally any new cookie with an expiration date in the past is deleted as soon as it's created.
The Date.getYear() call is now deprecated for the more consistent Date.getFullYear(), which returns 4 digit years for all browsers. I've changed the code to use Date.getFullYear() everywhere.
™ Version 4.2