A funny thing happened to me recently, on the way to this forum:

Until a short time ago, i contentedly used Safari (4.0.5) as my Web browser. Then one day, i noticed that something had disappeared: the little arrow up in the left-hand corner, which allowed me to go back, or forward, a page (I don’t know if it’s got a special name). This loss made moving about inside wordorigins (or any other website) very cumbersome: i was opening and closing new windows all the time. I have switched to Firefox (3.6.5), which does have this little arrow, and so far seems just as easy to use as Safari (not that I do anything at all complicated with either). Did something happen to Safari, or is this some screw-up which I myself have committed (it wouldn’t be the first, by a long chalk)?

The only drawback I’ve noticed about changing to Firefox, is that Safari used to let me stay logged in to wordorigins for days, even weeks, on end, whereas using Firefox, I am required to log in anew every time I visit the site, whether I log out on leaving it, or no.

Doc uses a Mac so he may well have some knowledge of the Safari browser. As for me the inner workings of Safari come in the same category as what song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women.

I use Firefox, and I don’t think I’ve ever been logged out of Wordorigins, so it’s something screwy at your end.

I use Firefox for Mac, and I haven’t had that problem either.  I wonder if you’ve got it set for “Private Browsing”, or some similar setting, so that it’s clearing cookies as soon as you leave the site.

Thanks, all of you. I’m not sure what I changed (something to do with “private browsing”, as Dr. Techie suggested, but I’m not sure what), but it seems to have worked - this time I’m still logged in, after turning Firefox off and on again.

Sorry, Lionello, missed your query about Firefox at the end.  The solution to most cookie problems in Firefox is to clear your internet cache by going to Options/Privacy/Remove Individual Cookies. Clicking on the latter gives you the option to clear all cookies or just individual ones. Scroll down the list and remove all cookies associated with WO. Restart your browser and you should be good to go.

thanks, aldi. i think that’s what i did (if so, it was all luck, not good management). anyway, the thing seems to work now.
Using my computer, I sometimes feel the way an Egyptian priest might have felt, if somebody had given him a fountain pen and told him to get a move on with the Rosetta inscription......

Sorry to be so late to the party.  I have a geriatric Mac running Safari 1.0.3 (v85.8.1).  It too has the forward and back arrows in the upper left corner.  I don’t know how you managed to eliminate one or both...perhaps some accidental key sequence that customized your toolbar.  As I’m not familiar with your later version of Safari, I can’t guide you as to how to restore the toolbar to its default settings, which include the forward and back arrows, but Safari Help should be easy enough. 

I have been using Firefox for years now, and prefer it to my very much out-of-date Safari.  The most recent version of Safari on my wife’s Mac is functionally about equivalent to Firefox, but I find that the free add-ons [plug-ins?] available for Mozilla browsers [including Firefox] are both plentiful and useful.

When you log into WO, be sure to check the box next to “Keep me logged in.” or some similar phrase.