Screwed up Web Browsers - ERRORS!

[Harry]

If you monkey up your computer and its web browser, you can expect problems and a less than enjoyable experience on this web site.

Norton Internet Security and other firewalls are probably the biggest culprit, not that Norton or a firewall is a problem in itself, but it's the way you configure and install it.

This web site depends upon cookies and a thing called HTTP_REFERER to serve up its pages and photos. Cookies remember your user name and password so you don't need to put them in each time you visit. They also remember all your favorite settings for screen appearance. SmokStak nor I get any excitement out of these cookies - they are for your benefit. (This is not necessarily so on other web sites.)

HTTP_REFERER lets my web server know that a valid call is being made to serve up a photo or a graphic image as a part of creating a page display. Photos and images are not made available through off-site pages. Unless the server sees that the call is made from SmokStak, you won't see the images or photos either. Some of these firewalls also stop pop-ups. That's great for commercial sites, but here on this site, we use pop-ups for an informative purpose.

Your web browser and your firewall can be configured to allow smokstak.com cookies and http_referer. (Yes, referer is spelled referrer in the real world, but a programmer wrote this stuff.)

Tools > Internet Options > Privacy > Sites - Allow smokstak.com

Tools > Internet Options > Security > Sites - add http://*.smokstak.com

In Norton Internet Security, you can add a site: www.smokstak.com and then go to Advanced Options and flag it to not block the Referer. While you are there, go to Active Content and allow scripts to execute. You can set this for just this web site so that you are protected when you cruise off to the deeper entrails of the internet.

I can't deal with all of the possible configurations and installations out there. As I said before, If you monkey up your computer and its web browser, you can expect problems and a less than enjoyable experience on this web site.

-- Harry