//Notice the use of escape to encode special characters (semicolons, commas, spaces) 
//in the value string. This function assumes that cookie names do not have any special characters.
//
// example use of expires:
//
// var today = new Date()   
// var expires = new Date()   
// expires.setTime(today.getTime() + 1000*60*60*24*365)   
// setCookie("TheCoolJavaScriptPage", name, expires)

function setCookie(name, value, expire) {
	if ( !value || value == null ) value = "";
	document.cookie = name + "=" + escape(value) + ((expire == null) ? "" : ("; expires=" + expire.toGMTString()))
}

//The following function returns a cookie value, given the name of the cookie:
//If none was found or the cookie is not set, this function returns "";
function getCookie(Name) {
	var search = Name + "="   
	if (document.cookie.length > 0) { // if there are any cookies      
		offset = document.cookie.indexOf(search)       
		if (offset != -1) { // if cookie exists          
			offset += search.length          
			// set index of beginning of value         
			end = document.cookie.indexOf(";", offset)          
			// set index of end of cookie value         
			if (end == -1) {      
				end = document.cookie.length
			}
			return unescape(document.cookie.substring(offset, end))      
		}
	}
	return "";
}