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Web Auto-Login from Outlook Toolbar Icon/Menu

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SpamRestraint

Vendor
Jul 18, 2004
1
US
Hi,

Not sure if I'm posting this in the right forum, but I've seen a "somewhat similar" ( thread here, so I'll give it a shot. Please advise if I'm asking in the wrong forum. :)

I run a web-based service company, and am frequently adding new features, extended functions, etc. in response to customer requests, suggestions and feedback in general.

A prior request was to provide a downloadable Outlook toolbar icon so that when someone had Outlook open, they could click the toolbar icon, which would launch a browser of choice and take the user to our login page. That in itself was extremely easy and well received.

Since providing this, I'm now receiving requests to modify the toolbar to include a drop-down menu with five options:

- Open URL of company login page
- "form" style field to enter and store a user ID (locally)
- "form" style field to enter and store a password (locally)
- "Auto-login" to URL of company "members area"
- Option to enable or disable Auto-login feature

I can handle the Outlook toolbar mods, but I'm curious as to how to pass the user ID and password to my login page. I use cookies, but not persistent ones.

I thought about using the typical URL?xxxx syntax and taking the values and substituting them for the "username" and "password" values that someone would normally type in manually to my "LoginInBox" input class. But, after further consideration, I'm not real comfortable about implementing this, as the ID and password would be transmitted in plain text. I believe I can encrypt them before sending, but don't know how I'd decrypt them on the server side.

So basically what I'm asking is this: Does anyone have any code-fragments or references that I might review to glean implementation ideas from? In addition, I'm welcome to any suggestions, alternative methods, feedback, etc. All comments, positive or negative, are sincerely appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 
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