Anybody have a slick way to tell if people are on the system?

[Mufasa]

Does anybody have a slick way to tell if people are on the system. I have a
login so I can tell if a user is authenticated. What I've done now is make a
dataset that I store in the application variable and everytime somebody
loads a page, I update that dataset ( based on sessionid ) with the time the
user last loaded a page. When it reaches more the 20 minutes, I make the
assumption that the people must have gone elsewhere.

Just wondering if there is a slicker/better way to do this.

Any thoughts.

TIA - Jeff.

 

[Guest]

Not really.

 

[RB]

Not really.

Agreed. The only addition you might make is a "Sign out" button, that
will do the same thing as the 20 minute timeout. However, you'll need to
keep the timeout, as you cannot rely on your users clicking on the
sign-out button (unless you stand behind each one with a mallet ;-)

Cheers,

RB.

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

Agreed. The only addition you might make is a "Sign out" button, that will
do the same thing as the 20 minute timeout. However, you'll need to keep
the timeout, as you cannot rely on your users clicking on the sign-out
button (unless you stand behind each one with a mallet ;-)

I would actually go further and say that having this sort of functionality
(or anything like it) is actually worse than not having it at all because it
is so unreliable...

E.g. 1,000 people log in at 09:00 on a Monday to check something very
quickly, and then by 09:01 999 of them have closed their browser and gone
somewhere else...

However, until just after 09:20, it will appear as if there are 1,000
current users...

 

[Cowboy \(Gregory A. Beamer\)]

The web is stateless. This means the phone is hung up after every single
page call. After a call, the only means of keeping a user's context is
through session information, which is a kludge. If one examines it
objectively, there really is no state, as both sides are using persistent
data to store the information, but it appears as if there is state.

Having said that, without some form of beacon in the page, which would
entail either an ActiveX control, a Silverlight 1.1 control (beta still) or
a Java applet, there is no way to maintain communication. Even if you use
these techniques, you are not guaranteed a spot in line unless the piece on
the client side has a Dispose() method to send a beacon that it is being
killed. If you ask me, that is a lot of programming for little benefit.

 

[Mufasa]

Actually our software includes a remote control boxing glove on an arm that
will swing out and hit the customer when they are stupid. Unfortunately not
everybody installs it though.

I have a sign out button that they can use but they never do (including
myself).

Someone else said the problem could be that 20 minutes after 1000 people log
in, it will still show them as logged in. When I print my list of current
users, I print how long since they did anything so I can take that in to
account.

Thanks everybody.

J.