i am designing a composite web control that has that if the user is authenticated and loged in shows something like " welcome <username > , sing out " and if not authenticated shows something like "log in"
so the questions are >>

1. how can i retreive the authenitication cookie of that session ( it of course exists if user has before been authenticated )

2. then i have to send the user identity that we got to the user to the custom control, in which event of the form should we do that ? ( the event should be after getting the cookie , and before rendering the custom control )

and generally asking, whats the difference between a formsauthenticationticket class, with a normal cookie? what does it have more?


thanks for your time ...