Back to the original problem...
I've done a little testing, and:

Yes, it will only work with www.gossamer-threads.com (or for that matter, anything.gossamer-threads.com, including ftp.gossamer-threads.com). It however does NOT work with just http://gossamer-threads.com. It doesn't seem to even attempt to set a cookie when you log in using http://gossamer-threads.com. This isn't the case for Mozilla, (and probably IE).

I looked at a variety of other sites, and it seems they don't even bother with this problem. They just prevent it by just forwarding you to the subdomain you're supposed to use. For example, going to google.com automatically takes you to www.google.com, thus their cookies just have to work for www.google.com. Visiting www.slashdot.org takes you do slashdot.org. ebay.com takes you do www.ebay.com. That's why you haven't noticed any problems with other sites.

I'm not 100% certain that it's actually a Netscape 4.x bug, but it certainly is a possibility. If I have time later, I'll write some code to test.

I believe Netscape is not counting http://gossamer-threads.com as a match for .gossamer-threads.com for the cookie. That's why ftp.gossamer-threads.com and www.gossamer-threads.com works with the forum and not gossamer-threads.com. It might be a problem with Gossamer Forum not setting a cookie when you attempt to login from just gossamer-threads.com though (but then again, it sets one if you're using Mozilla or IE).



Adrian