Cookies
A cookie is a piece of data that a web server asks a browser to store for it. They are designed to allow user-specific data to be stored without overloading a server with huge amounts of information.
For finer control over what cookies you accept than most browsers support, use a filtering proxy such as the Internet Junkbuster.
Here is a list of all the cookies our site sets, as well as what they are used for:
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| efMusic | Allows music to be played when set to 1. |
| eftz | Holds your time zone, set from the Calendar page and used to display scheduled events on that page as well as the timestamps on message board posts. |
| efemail | Your email address as it appears in message board mailtos, if you enter one in the Pub or Back Room. It's also automatically set on any password-protected page for members. It is only used for filling in the email field on the message boards. |
| efname | Your name, as it appears on the Pub or Back Room. It is only used for filling in the appropriate field on the message boards, and is also automatically set on password-protected pages. |
| efbbkey | A random value assigned to you for the purposes of editing and deleting message board posts. For the curious, this is the MD5 signature of time() concatenated with rand(). |
| eflastpub | The time you last visited the Pub. Used for generating NEW tags on messages. |
| eflasttest | Ditto, for the Back Room. |
| efstartpub | The time your current Pub session started (also used for generating NEW labels). This cookie is not saved between sessions. |
| efstarttest | Ditto, for the Back Room. |
| ef_sig_pub | Your most-recently-used signature in the Pub. |
| ef_sig_test | Ditto, for the Back Room. |
JavaScript
JavaScript is a programming language, embeddable in HTML, that tells a browser to behave in a certain way; as with cookies, the idea is to make the browsers do work that web servers ordinarily would. Despite the name, JavaScript has nothing to do with Sun's Java programming language.
Most of the site should be usable with JavaScript turned off. Currently, to the best of my knowledge, only the Album is not.
Music requires JavaScript. The calendar pages are also very slightly JavaScript-enhanced - you can view the time of an event in another time zone without resetting your cookie, which is useful if you don't allow this site to set cookies.
Most JavaScript code is protected with <!-- --> comments and, where appropriate, alternatives are provided via <NOSCRIPT> tags.
Other Browser Notes
If you're using Internet Explorer, you may want to check that it's configured to send HTTP 1.1 requests (under the "Advanced" tab in the "Internet Options" dialog). If you do, the web server here will compress the pages it sends you, making for a slightly faster browsing experience. Netscape 4 always gets compressed pages.