Re: Preview before cookie feature

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Author: Siri Amrit Kaur
Date:  
To: plug-discuss
Subject: Re: Preview before cookie feature
On Tuesday 12 April 2005 08:37 pm, Joseph Sinclair wrote:
> 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++


That was very informative, thank you.
I, too, like the cookie management in Mozilla better than in Firefox.

Siri Amrit
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