Yes.

I believe that each time your browser sends a request to webdiplomacy.net, webdip tracks that date and time. When another user loads a page that includes your name, the online icon will be there if your last page load was within 5 or 10 minutes or something like that.

So if you close your browser, it'll still show you as online for a few minutes.

I think that is how it works. I'd have to dig into the code to verify for sure.

Alderian,

I'm not sure that's true, as people in the past have asked me why I haven't responded despite being "online". I was, in fact, not online all day, I had just left my browser open on my computer at home.

Browsers send requests even while being left idle in many cases.

Webdip may have a "keep alive" that triggers as long as your browser is open.

@ abgemacht:

I'm confused by what you're saying. If you walk out of the house and leave behind the computer, connected to the internet and with the browser open and logged into webdip, in what way is that "not online" ? The computer is online, you're just AFK, surely?

I think what I said is very clear in the context of the OP. He wants to know if the "online" indicator truly shows just online or active. I think it just shows if you're online. Others have claimed it shows if you're active.

I've often wondered how it works with mobile phones. If i write this message and send it via my mobile am i only online during the sending, or not online at all, or the sending and x minutes afterwards?

I don't think it's as clear as you think it is, abgemacht.

I never actually go to the top right of the screen and click "log off" when I leave webdip. But I *do* close my browser...

I would suspect that closing the browser is equivalent to logging off, from the server's perspective.

Yes, but what I mean is, as far as we know, the OP could have been asking whether he has to click "log off" every time he leaves the site.

Maybe, but I don't think that's what he was wondering.

I believe you are shown as online for 30 minutes after webdip last "saw" you load a page - which could be (for example) a message send, looking at a game, or browsing the forum. I suspect that if you explicitly log out, you're immediately shown as offline.

Someone could check the code if you want to know exactly (or Kestas could tell you, if he's around).

I interpreted it the way that Jamie is and was confused by your answer. But your answer by your interpretation may also be correct. Just depends on which piece of information the OP was asking for, and maybe they want both.

I don't believe that webdip knows whether or not the browser is closed. So, I think if you load a game board, then immediately close the browser, you're still shown as "online" for 30 minutes after you loaded the game.

@Ald

Well, I guess I'm the odd one out then. : )

@Tin

That could be true. I'll take a peak at the code and see.

I wasn't able to find any time-out feature for the $online variable. It appears to only check if you're logged in.

It's still unclear if you're considered online if you close the browser without logging off.

@abgemacht: i was actually wondering exactly that, do i have to log out every time. thanks for the clarification to all of you!

I bet it is session life that drives it. If the session expires, there is probably code that changes the user state to offline and when the session restarts or the user logs in it changes them to online. And the 30 minute time would be consistent with that as 30 is a common session timeout.

Yup Draugnars right there is a session life. When you access a page it updates a table of sessions, that contains a list of which users are logged on, how many pages they've accessed, and a few other details. When the gamemaster processing script runs it takes any sessions that are older than a certain period (I forget how long exactly) and puts them in the access log archive (mainly used for detecting multi accounters)

After this has happened a list of logged on user IDs is saved to a .json file, which is loaded up when someone views a page like the forum, and after the page has loaded some JavaScript is run which adds an online marker to all user account links on the page who are currently online (this allows e.g. forum / notice HTML containing user profile links to be cached and stay the same, even though people who are going online/offline may change)

So someone idling for longer than 30 minutes on the home page (for example) will appear offline?

Ah, neat. Does this mean that the online/offline indicators are frozen when game processing is disabled?

So we may go offline while trying to read an obi tome?

That's right mendax (though I'm not sure if it's 30 minutes, that sounds a bit long to me), and I think so tin can. Definitely sessions don't get moved to the access logs during that period so the number of users in the session table just grows, but I don't think it refreshes the json when processing is disabled so the markers will stay the same