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1. I talk to jackie for 30 minutes who “transfers” me (I think “let me transfer you” is comcast-ese for “let me hang up on you”)

2. I talk to Jessica, who puts me on hold for 30 minutes while she “finds someone who knows about cable cards” (i.e. hopes I go away)

3. I talk to Stephanie, who “transfers” me once again

4. I talk to Randy, who, I just got off the phone with. Surprise surprise! Sends out a tech. Next Sunday. Despite the fact that I told her exactly what is happening, and that I know that, courtesy of this link, the problem is that my card is not configured correctly (which I found while trying to fix it myself, courtesy of Tivo’s Extremely Helpful Tech Support Pages (NOT SACRCASTIC! Thank you tivo for bein a lone voice of intelligence in a sea of Comcast dementia).

So that’s four calls tonight coupled with the three this morning (and not including Jessica’s call (!)). The other calls were because our phone and internet went out again. I called the “Executive Escalation” line to ensure that the issue wasn’t the incorrect address, as it was the last time the phone went out. She assured me it wasn’t. I called the regular comcast tech line, to make sure that the problem wasn’t the address. I again was assured it wasn’t. I called one more time, all sneaky like, to make sure they had the right address associated with my account. I talked to Keith, who told me there were actually 3 addresses (WTF?!?!?!) associated with my account, but wouldn’t tell me what they were, and again assured me that the address wasn’t the problem. The tech fixed our phone issue around 2:00 PM – I’ll give you one guess what the problem was.

Oh, Comcast Cares gurus, where are you? You gave me so much hope that this would all be fixed when you first contacted me. Instead I’ve had to call comcast and get the runaround EVERY SINGLE F___ING DAY I’ve been home since I ordered this service. It’s getting rediculously hard for me to not just blow up at every single person I talk to.

(I know this picture is about flash, but just substitute “comcast” where appropriate and you’ll get the gist)

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Now let’s say you want to access a page on this site from an <iframe> from an external domain, say www.whowantsathroatpunch.com. Stupid IE6 will not send the right cookies in the request headers. In fact, I’m pretty sure it will send no cookies. Why? Because it’s a dick. Every Other Browser does this correctly. It’s not a security issue -it’s not like you’re asking IE6 to send cookies that belong to another domain, or to teach our nation’s children to read or anything. You’re asking the browser for the cookies that have been previously set, and IE6 in its infinite dick-kickery is failing in that basic respect.

What really gets my goat is that, whereas the iframe will not get its cookies, if you make the src of the iframe do an AJAX request to another page on the site, that request will get its cookies sent correctly.

The workaround I found is to give the <iframe> src a new page if the browser is IE6, and on that new page, make an AJAX request to another new page that outputs the value of the cookie you’re looking for. When you receive the AJAX request, you can then parse the response and redircet the user to the now-corrected original <iframe> src. It’s stupid and inefficient, I know:

<script type="text/javascript">
	// note: this page only called from IE6, so no browser testing
	// or compatibility checks are needed. I'm rocking the prototype.js for
	// the ajax, you do what you like.

	function editionTest() {
		var test_url = '/cookie_tester.php';
		var domain = new Ajax.Request(test_url, {
		    method:'get',
    		onSuccess: function(transport){
				var response = transport.responseText;
				if (response.search('site_a') > -1) {
					redirector('a');
				} else if (response.search('site_b') > -1) {
					redirector('b');
				} else {
					redirector('');
				}
    		},
			onFailure: function() {
				redirector('');
			}
		  });
	}

	function redirector(domain) {
		var url = parseUrl();
		var id = url['id'];
		var var = url['var'];
		var domain_parsed = 'http://' + domain + '.throat-punch.com/page_you_really_wanted.php?id=' + id + '&var1=' + var1;
		window.location = domain_parsed;
	}

	function parseUrl() {
		var hash = {};
		var url = String(document.location).split('?');
		if (url[1]) {
			var vars= url[1].split('&');
			var ct = vars.length;
			for (var i=0; i<ct; i++) {
				var item = vars[i].split('=');
				var name = item[0];
				var value = item[1];
				hash[name] = value;
			}
		}
		return hash;
	}

Event.observe(window, 'load', function() {
	editionTest();
});
</script>

I’m writing this post solely for google to pick it up, just in case anyone ever is in this position again. So, dude who googled “ie6 cookies iframe 302 throat punch”, this one’s for you.

(thanks to celebdu for the photo)

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