newbie basic realm protection - why don't the input usr/pass stick?

Hi everyone I am hacking my way through something unrelated to this post.. but needed to stop and (real quick) pass-protect a page to use it to run some quick (*admin-only*) scripts on a shared host. ..and I see now how poor is my understanding of what seems like basic stuff. As a start for my quick understanding to pass protect a page, I used the "Example #6 Basic HTTP Authentication example", from here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/features.http-auth.php ..which is just this: <?php if (!isset($_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_USER'])) {

    header('WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="My Realm"');
    header('HTTP/1.0 401 Unauthorized');
    echo 'Text to send if user hits Cancel button';
    exit;

} else {

    echo "<p>Hello {$_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_USER']}.</p>";
    echo "<p>You entered {$_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_PW']} as your password.</p>";

} ?> ..and no matter what i type in the authentication dialogue that pops up.. then after I submit it.. it just keeps looping forever popping up the dialogue.. I.e. I never get past the authenticate dialogue to see this line executed: echo "<p>Hello {$_SERVER['PHP_AUTH_USER']}.</p>"; What am I missing? Thanks for your bothering to help with this, ------------ Govinda