I would like to thank Brazilian software developer Daniel Melo for posting this code which helped me to solve a problem which was very pesky indeed, and in need of a solution. The problem occurred during a user’s logged-in session for a chat application I was building. This was the issue: the app is basically a live-chat client, which also shows all current users online, by name. If a logged-in user clicked the “Logout” link, all was good, no problem, his/her name was removed from the list of currently logged-on users. However, if the person just suddenly decided to end the chat session by just closing the browser and hitting ‘X’ (as I myself might do!), the user was still showing as currently online, and NOT logged out (obviously this is an annoying issue). (more…)