Never had to jump a hoop to search. They just need to use more smilies...
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Love, peace, and grease,
allthat... aka: aaron@pangolin
Brian actually had a point. If you weren't logged in, you had to complete a catchpa and answer a question before you could search. It was a real pain, because often you'd be in the middle of composing a reply when you'd need to look up something to add to your post. So you open a new browser window to search for the post you want to link to, and you'd have to go through the catchpa and the question. (Session cookies don't flow from one window to the next in IE, so even though you're logged in on one window, the other window isn't. Also, lots of people are stuck with IE if they're browsing from work.) Firefox doesn't have this problem because it supports tabbed browsing, and tabs share session cookies.
Whenever I was stuck using IE, I always tried to make sure I had two windows logged in - one for reading and posting, and one for searching. If you've never felt a need to do this, then evidently you only did searches while you were already logged in, which is why you never had to jump through any hoops...
For what it's worth, I once felt just like Brian; I wondered why searches by people that weren't logged in would be such a big deal. I asked Spec about it a long time ago, and he told me the same thing that he posted on alt.lasers. (The load on the server caused by a search engine spider hitting the search page is unacceptable.)
Adam
I use IE an once I log in I stay logged in until I log out. So I can open up new windows, shut down my computer, or whatever I want and I don't have to enter a password or anything for this website.
Geroge, you are correct; if you open a new window from within the one you're already logged in on, it will open with the same session cookie and you'll be logged in on that window too. But if you launch another instance of IE instead (which uses exactly the name amount of system resources as right-clicking and selecting "open in new window"), then you won't be logged in.
Also, carmangary - you really should log out before you close your browser. If you don't, you'll show up in the forums as being logged in even when you're not. (At least until the session cookie times out.)
And, of course, if you're the type that hates to remember passwords, you can always let IE remember it for you. (Firefox also allows this.) Personally I never let a browser handle my passwords, but I'm old-school like that.
I wish they'd let me install Firefox at work, but they're a bunch of dicks. I did it once, and when they found out they got all pissy and un-installed it. I suppose I could continue to install it and then just nuke it before I leave each day, but that's more work that it's worth.
Adam