OK, this issue is now put to bed. Thank you all for your help. P.S. -- what this issue has taught me touches on what pbreit said in another thread about the hazards of bypassing wonderful web2py built-in auth login/logout facilities when you choose the route of auth by dialog. My approach, has been to explore a fully-componentized version of my website. What I didn't fully appreciate is that if you take that approach, it's an all or nothing game. And the all-component approach touches more of the site than I had originally anticipated.
Now that I realize how big a commitment it is, I understand what needs to be done to make it all work. It means more work up front, but the upshot is a much more dynamic website with (usually) much faster response times once you get past the initial page load. The remarkable thing is that you can compress a multi-multi-multi-page website down to a single page. If planned properly up front, it's not that much overhead to do. My problem is that I've evolved to it over a long time, so I've had to rework lots of old-think stuff in order to get to nirvana. Sounds a lot like life, doesn't it? ;-)
