Tip: careful when testing users in separate session
Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 5:14 pmI thought I would throw this out as a general observation and tip.
I am frequently testing behavior of alias and roles for users. You can't log in as two different users in the same browser session on different tab pages as the new tab page will put you in with the same current user. (This behavior is desirable for the most part.) The "run as" feature doesn't allow me to switch back to me since the run-as-user does not have "run as" rights, so its more convenient to run two different browsers where I can log in and out independently in one browser while staying logged in as me in the other.
This has led to some flakey behaviors that I feel are "browser cache coherency issues". Here is how I have found to minimize -- though not completely eliminate -- those strange behaviors.
My method of working involves running both Firefox and IE. (I use Firefox to test behavior under user names, while I do my development in IE under my name. The reason I do this is that IE is necessary for best behavior of all developer functions whereas Firefox seems okay for end user use. If you use the IE rendering engine in Firefox, at the same time you use IE as another user there seems to be more severe problems from sharing of browser cache. These problems still exist using IE and Firefox "native" as I describe, but to a much lesser degree.
The specifics are too tedious to document and probably amount to "noise" anyway. I just roll with it.
So anyway, if you are testing like me, don't be overly concerned by some odd behaviors, and before assuming something doesn't work, try testing on another machine if available, or logout out and close both browsers -- or even clear your browsers' cache. (I don't like to do this as there a many things in my cache I do want to retain.)
Bob
I am frequently testing behavior of alias and roles for users. You can't log in as two different users in the same browser session on different tab pages as the new tab page will put you in with the same current user. (This behavior is desirable for the most part.) The "run as" feature doesn't allow me to switch back to me since the run-as-user does not have "run as" rights, so its more convenient to run two different browsers where I can log in and out independently in one browser while staying logged in as me in the other.
This has led to some flakey behaviors that I feel are "browser cache coherency issues". Here is how I have found to minimize -- though not completely eliminate -- those strange behaviors.
My method of working involves running both Firefox and IE. (I use Firefox to test behavior under user names, while I do my development in IE under my name. The reason I do this is that IE is necessary for best behavior of all developer functions whereas Firefox seems okay for end user use. If you use the IE rendering engine in Firefox, at the same time you use IE as another user there seems to be more severe problems from sharing of browser cache. These problems still exist using IE and Firefox "native" as I describe, but to a much lesser degree.
The specifics are too tedious to document and probably amount to "noise" anyway. I just roll with it.
So anyway, if you are testing like me, don't be overly concerned by some odd behaviors, and before assuming something doesn't work, try testing on another machine if available, or logout out and close both browsers -- or even clear your browsers' cache. (I don't like to do this as there a many things in my cache I do want to retain.)
Bob