I've built a shopping cart app that stores shopping cart items in an associative array session variable. Works like a charm... UNLESS the user has turned off "automatic cookie handling" in IE and not checked "always allow session cookies." On the one hand, this is a serious problem that break the site... on the other hand, it affects only a very small percentage of users and only those on IE (turning off cookies in Mozilla does not have this nasty effect). Of course, stupid IE with its stupid overwhelming market share compounds the matter... but you see my point.
So... thoughts? Statistics? Solutions?
Cookies / Session variable problem
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- twigletmac
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Unless you wish to have the session id in the URL, which I personally do not like, then you can test to see whether you are able to set a session cookie. If you can't, display a message saying 'You need to enable cookies to use this site', and link to a privacy statement which tells the punters that it is just a session cookie and will only last x amount of time and they really won't be able to shop on the site without it. Giving an easy-to-understand explanation of a session cookie to help educate the paranoid, ie. you can't use it to track their movements to another site, you don't store their name, credit card details etc in it, may help.
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