Comments on: Improving Firefox Cookie Management http://cafe.elharo.com/ui/improvinf-firefox-cookie-management/ Longer than a blog; shorter than a book Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:32:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: Greg http://cafe.elharo.com/ui/improvinf-firefox-cookie-management/#comment-67329 Greg Thu, 22 Mar 2007 00:51:14 +0000 http://minicafe.elharo.com/ui/improvinf-firefox-cookie-management/#comment-67329 Agreed; the Firefox solution, though better than IE, still leaves much to be desired. Cookies are a pain: - who wants to be tracked by ad companies? - many non-ad cookies (webtrends, _utmz etc.) still clutter up your system, but bring you zero benefit - cookies are a privacy liability - record of where you've been - the ones that truly benefit you (logins, shopping carts, etc) get lost in the noise - if you select "Ask me every time", and a blizzard of cookies arrives, that ask me dialog will pop up so often you won't be able to do anything else The way I wish things would work: Surf normally with all cookies blocked except whitelist; when a new site needs to be whitelisted, you can easily turn on "Ask me every time". This is basically supported by Firefox right now. However, when a site wants to set a cookie, I want more choices besides (deny, allow, allow session) x (this cookie, all cookies from site): - Deny all from this site for remainder of session (NEW). In other words, stop accepting foo.com cookies, but don't add foo.com to your persistent block list. You may have good reason for wanting no record of foo.com on your system. - Allow all from this site for remainder of session (NEW). Foo.com cookies are retained only until you quit the browser, and foo.com is not added to your persistent allow list. Allows temporary browsing of a site you don't plan to come back to - Stop accepting all cookies immediately. Halts the flood of "ask me" modal dialogs for the site that can't resist setting a #$^% cookie for every image on the page. Agreed; the Firefox solution, though better than IE, still leaves much to be desired. Cookies are a pain:
- who wants to be tracked by ad companies?
- many non-ad cookies (webtrends, _utmz etc.) still clutter up your system, but bring you zero benefit
- cookies are a privacy liability - record of where you’ve been
- the ones that truly benefit you (logins, shopping carts, etc) get lost in the noise
- if you select “Ask me every time”, and a blizzard of cookies arrives, that ask me dialog will pop up so often you won’t be able to do anything else

The way I wish things would work:
Surf normally with all cookies blocked except whitelist; when a new site needs to be whitelisted, you can easily turn on “Ask me every time”. This is basically supported by Firefox right now.

However, when a site wants to set a cookie, I want more choices besides (deny, allow, allow session) x (this cookie, all cookies from site):
- Deny all from this site for remainder of session (NEW). In other words, stop accepting foo.com cookies, but don’t add foo.com to your persistent block list. You may have good reason for wanting no record of foo.com on your system.
- Allow all from this site for remainder of session (NEW). Foo.com cookies are retained only until you quit the browser, and foo.com is not added to your persistent allow list. Allows temporary browsing of a site you don’t plan to come back to
- Stop accepting all cookies immediately. Halts the flood of “ask me” modal dialogs for the site that can’t resist setting a #$^% cookie for every image on the page.

]]> By: Masklinn http://cafe.elharo.com/ui/improvinf-firefox-cookie-management/#comment-17695 Masklinn Sat, 23 Sep 2006 19:47:22 +0000 http://minicafe.elharo.com/ui/improvinf-firefox-cookie-management/#comment-17695 > Provide a simple menu option or toolbar button to enable/disable cookies. i.e. turn cookies on or off by time rather than site. Normally one would surf with cookies off, and only turn cookies on when you hit a site that required them. Here you are: http://basic.mozdev.org/cookiebutton/ > The per-site cookie preferences should have a filter box like Thunderbird’s. i.e. type in a piece of a domain name like “shopping” and all the domains that don’t contain “shopping” would vanish. Currently it’s quite hard to find the specific site whose cookies you want to unblock. http://addneditcookies.mozdev.org/ > Provide a simple menu option or toolbar button to enable/disable cookies. i.e. turn cookies on or off by time rather than site. Normally one would surf with cookies off, and only turn cookies on when you hit a site that required them.

Here you are: http://basic.mozdev.org/cookiebutton/

> The per-site cookie preferences should have a filter box like Thunderbird’s. i.e. type in a piece of a domain name like “shopping” and all the domains that don’t contain “shopping” would vanish. Currently it’s quite hard to find the specific site whose cookies you want to unblock.

http://addneditcookies.mozdev.org/

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