I accomplish something similar to what your talking about by simply setting the default cookie behavior in Firefox and Mozilla to accept all cookies as session cookies (they go away when the browser is closed).  Some versions of Firefox use a dropdown labeled "Keep Cookies:" to set this, just select "until I close Firefox" to have every cookie act as a session cookie, even if the site is trying to set it as a persistent cookie.

Most of the time, there's no problem accepting the cookie for a given site (although I use adBlock to block all of the "tracking" sites I know of) for that session, the problem lies in the persons coding the website insisting on a persistent cookie when what's really needed is a session cookie, so I just have the browser correct their coding error for them ;}

If there's a site where I actually want them to retain the cookie between sessions (none so far, since "remembering" your user/pass with a cookie is a BAD thing), then I can go to the cookie manager (before closing the browser) and change the settings for that site to allow it to be permanent (add it to the exceptions list).  Mozilla lets you be even more fine-grained based on P3P categories and whether the cookie is for the originating site, or is a third-party cookie, but the concept is the same (I wish Firefox would incorporate the more fine-grained control, perhaps in a later version...).

If you still want to see a popup for every cookie, you can do that too, just have Firefox ask you every time about how to store the cookie (and just choose "until I close Firefox" every time)

If you hit a site, and wish their cookie hadn't been accepted, just close the browser, reopen it, and continue browsing (History is a good tool to get back to where you were).

The majority of cookie use is (IMO) the result of bad code (misunderstanding of cookies, laziness, or outright incompetence (ask me about it sometime)).  I find that many sites set a cookie because the tool in use (ASP sites are infamous for this) sets it up automatically, and the designers never realize it's there, or never bother to change it.  A lot of shopping sites use a cookie as a session management tool (which comes down to laziness, since there's no reason to do so, sessions are easy enough to manage without trying to set a cookie via other means, including HTTP session management).  There are some sites that set cookies as a means of tracking users (mostly the big ad bureaus), but those sites are best blocked entirely anyway.

I would dispute that there is any valid reason to use cookies anymore, not since HTTP 1.1 became commonly available, but I'm apparently in the (extreme)minority on the web.

==Joseph++

Alan Dayley wrote:

<<SNIP>>

That is exactly what I want.

- Make a cookie buffer that retains the cookies from the site you are 
currently viewing.
- If you decide you don't want the cookies, dump the buffer.
- If you surf on to a new site, the cookies in the buffer get saved as if 
accepted and the current site cookies are now in the buffer.

That shouldn't be so hard to manage.  If I only knew how to write a 
Firefox addon.

  

Also, if Mozilla had that sort of feature, it would just start an arms
race as purveyors of mal- and mark-ware cookies tried to get registered
on your browser.
    

Yea, I suppose it would.  But I don't stop fighting spam because the 
spammers keep getting smarter.

Unfortunately "cookie people" are getting smarter.  This is a new 
technology that hides cookie backups in the Macromedia Flash environment.

http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=160400801

(Another reason not to install or use flash(?))

I am not fantical about cookies.  They have very ligitimate uses.  I just 
want control of my internet experience.

Alan
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