buggy behavior of new authentication system

[rmrichesjr]

On the off chance this post might help someone else either deal with the bugginess or perhaps help toward solution, here's a report on a particular problematic use case I have found fairly repeatable:

• 1) I'm using Firefox ESR. (The spyware known as Google Chrome is not allowed on my machine.)
  2) I cleared all cookies with "church" in the domain. (There were no old cookies with "lds" in the domain.)
  3) I authenticated successfully.
  4) (very quickly) I opened a new browser window at the Church website main page. It ended up showing this URL: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/?lang=eng&_r=1 The menu link/button does not have my name, and the menu has a 'Sign In' button. Repeated Ctrl-R and Shift-Ctrl-R retain that behavior, as if I have not authenticated.
  5) Several seconds later, I opened a new browser window to the User Control Panel here. That window allowed me to access moderator stuff, so it treats me as signed in.
  6) Several seconds later, I opened a new browser window to the Church website main page. It ended up showing this URL: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/?lang=eng&_r=1 That's the same as the window in step 4. This window shows my name, and the menu shows a 'Sign Out' button.
  7) Finally, refreshing the first window shows my name in the menu link/button, and the menu shows a 'Sign Out' button.

It seems that after signing in, there is a delay before the authentication actually takes effect, and a browser window opened too soon keeps the erroneous not-signed-in state for quite some time or until some other actions cause it to wake up to the truth.

I had sent Feedback with a shorter description of the problematic case via Feedback and got back a canned response that basically indicated the responder had not even looked at my report. I'll send the above, more detailed, use case description and see if the responder will actually look at it.

[russellhltn]

I'm using Firefox ESR. (The spyware known as Google Chrome is not allowed on my machine.)

You might want to consider using another browser that uses the chrome rendering engine, such as Brave or the new Edge. With so much of the world running the chrome engine, that's what's tested. The independents are more likely to have issues.

[davesudweeks]

It isn't just the "independents." I use Chrome most of the time. On the same computer with "remember me" selected in both instances:

When I log in to gmail:
1. click the login button
2. username remembered: click OK
3. PW remembered: click OK.
Result: 3 clicks, I'm in.

When I log in to the church site:
1. click the login button
2. username not remembered: click in the box and type in my 12-character user name name
3. click OK
4. PW not remembered unless I click on the password box
5. click on the popup window that has my password
6. click OK.
Result: 6 clicks and type 12 characters, I'm in.

[russellhltn]

2. username not remembered: click in the box and type in my 12-character user name name

Mine remembers the username, but I have to click on the box to put it in.
But that might be my browser's Autofill.

[rmrichesjr]

You might want to consider using another browser that uses the chrome rendering engine, such as Brave or the new Edge. With so much of the world running the chrome engine, that's what's tested. The independents are more likely to have issues.

I appreciate the helpful intent of the suggestion. The problem I'm seeing is not likely to be browser-specific. To try to clarify, the issue is that there is a window of time after successfully authenticating that a new browser window fails to catch that the authentication has been done. It feels similar to a server-side race condition. It appears analogous to a DB where you commit a write transaction and get back that the write transaction has successfully completed, but for the next few seconds a read query returns the pre-write-transaction value.

[russellhltn]

I tried just now logging into the main page. After the login, it might have showed the "not logged in" status for a fraction of a second, but it quickly fixed itself. This might be a caching issue where the browser is using old information.