[Sigia-l] time-out session lengths, security, and user tasks

[MJJAIXEN at up.com]

Depending on the task, those timeout messages can be more annoying than the
actual timeout.  Last week, I sat down and tried to balance my checkbook
register, my bank account, and my personal finance program from a large
software company in Redmond.  After a disasterous attempt to let the
software merge it's data with the bank's web site, I then had to go through
3 months worth of data to find the errors.  I could run a report online
that would give me the data I needed, but every 10 minutes, the report
would
disappear with a prompt asking me if I wanted to stay logged in.  Sometimes
I would catch the message; sometimes I wouldn't if I had overlayed the
browser session with my finance software, or if I had my head in my paper
register looking for a value.

Finally, I ended up killing the trees and working at the living room table.

"Ziya" wrote:

There's a variation on this: as the "magic" minute approaches, send the
user
a confirmation (Your session is about to expire, do you want to continue?).
If you don't get an answer to this confirmation in a "reasonable" (short)
time :-) then kill the session. This way the session can be legitimately
prolonged, for those who need it.