Directory Security

I know and often use the direcrory protection feature that is built in with Apache. It is the directory tag in the apache httpd.conf where you get the nice pop up window, but I was wondering if there was a way to submit those values through PHP. I'll provide a HTML/PHP form that asks for user/pw and then I want to pass those values to Apache so that they are authorized on that folder. I don't particularily like the way that the pop up window looks and I would much rather prefer the aforemention method. If this is impossible, how would I go about doing this sort of authroization using session variables. I know that there is a way to set it all up so that each sesssion is terminate on the broswer close, but I would also like to find out how I could keep a cookie on the user's machine so that I can grab their user/pw if the user so desires the next time they log into the site. Thanks for the help --Matt