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.
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. |
| 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. While it is unique to you, it is not recorded serverside. Instead, a hash of it and the content of your posts is saved alongside the post to allow the key to be used to decide if you can edit your posts. |
| 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.