I have a software application which users download from our website.
The website drops a cookie on the user's machine containing certain
information about which banner the visitor clicked to get to our site.
The downloaded software application has an embedded IE browser which
then reads the cookie and makes a note in the database so we can track
how our registered customers are finding us. Problem is that when a
visitor is using Firefox, the embedded IE browser cannot read the
Firefox cookie. Any way to solve this? |
Request for Question Clarification by
sublime1-ga
on
02 May 2005 11:32 PDT
londonplayer...
I'm not sure how familiar you are with Firefox, but, unlike
IE's cookies, which are all available as separate text files
in a folder called 'Cookies', Firefox' cookies are all lumped
together in a single text file called 'cookies.txt', located
in a folder containing other Firefox files:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla\
Profiles\default\letters&numbers.slt\cookies.txt
IE is not configured to read the lines in this file, which
comprise the Firefox cookies, but assumes that cookies are
located in its native location - the folder Cookies:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Cookies
...and can be easily scanned, as separate text files, at
that location.
It would take some major modification to get the embedded
browser to be able to scan for specific cookies in the
Firefox cookies.txt file.
It might be easier to approach someone at Mozilla.org
with reference to finding a way to embed a Mozilla
browser alongside the IE browser in your application,
and a way to recognize which browser was used for the
download, and thus, which to activate when the program
is started.
Easier still, I think, would be to use another method,
such as a scan of your server logs, to match the user's
IP address with the banner used to access your site.
The latter is not something I could assist you with,
but perhaps these thoughts will help you to clarify
what approach you want to explore further.
sublime1-ga
|
Clarification of Question by
londonplayer-ga
on
02 May 2005 12:13 PDT
sublime,
Thanks for the info. I am not very familiar with firefox. Scanning the
server logs is not possible for us and also the users IP address may
change (or be via a proxy of a large ISP) as user may visit website
one day and download the next day/week. Do you see any issues in just
writing some code in our C++ download that would read cookies.txt
looking for our cookie if IE couldn't find it?
LP
|
Request for Question Clarification by
sublime1-ga
on
02 May 2005 14:28 PDT
londonplayer...
Just as you're not familiar with Firefox, I'm not familiar
with the coding capabilities in C++, but the approach you
suggest sounds workable, if you have a programmer who can
do that for you. The trick might be in getting the code to
first, identify the active username, so that it can identify
the correct folder under Documents and Settings, and second,
to search the subfolders under Mozilla, since the name of
the "letters&numbers.slt" folder is randomly generated.
It's called a "salted name". The cookies.txt file is in that
"salted name" directory, and there really aren't any files
in the intervening directory structure, so I shouldn't be
especially hard to do, if there's a code in C++ which allows
for searching subdirectories. Only a programmer would know
for certain, and I'm not one.
sublime1-ga
|
Clarification of Question by
londonplayer-ga
on
03 May 2005 18:02 PDT
Thanks Sublime.
|
Request for Question Clarification by
sublime1-ga
on
07 May 2005 13:30 PDT
londonplayer...
Has the information I've provided served to satisfy your
interests in asking this question? If so, I can post it
as a formal answer and be reimbursed - something I didn't
do initially due to uncertainty about precisely what you
needed.
sublime1-ga
|
