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Cookie management :: Why not this?
Posted by: snuz2
Date: January 15, 2007 07:38AM

Forgive me if this has been covered somewhere, but I didn't pick up a reference to it in my search of this forum.....I am a new user of KM and it seems to me that the cookie management of this browser shares the same faults as many others, I am hoping that the legendary scriptibility of KM has generated a solution by a like minded user already, but maybe not.

My view of the cookie problem is this: Some cookies you want to keep, ones that have website prefrences, maybe shopping cart references. Some cookies you need to let stay for the session duration or you can't use a particular website. Most cookies are not of these categories and you don't want them at all.
I think that the native cookie management in KM is very close to what I need, I can accept cookies on a per site basis and accept session cookies regardless. Deleting cookies does not seem like such a good idea, some of them in my first category above should stay. The problem comes in when deciding to enable access for a website. Most often you don't know until the site complains that it can't store a cookie on your machine.

And here is what sucks: you have to open your way down through the fancy menus and dialog boxes to see your cookie settings, then you type in the URL you want to grant permission and close and all is well. Well, there should be a command to do this, just push a button or hit a key and the base URL is entered into the golden circle of priveledged web sites.

Does anyone have a macro or other solution that can do this? I don't know of any browser that has this functionality and I wonder, because it can be scripted too easily and any website that wishes could just put itself into one's inner sanctum too easily? Is that why it's always buried deep in the hierarchy of commands?

Any thoughts?

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Re: Cookie management :: Why not this?
Posted by: Terry
Date: January 15, 2007 01:56PM

Well, the difficulty with cookie management is that they have to be intercepted prior to the webpage's being displayed. In some cases this requires you to run a proxy or having a program running in the background. There are two programs that do this pretty successfully. Cookie Pal and Cookie Crusher. Both work with most Mozilla and IE based browsers. In other words, you run these programs in the background and they intercept cookies for your perusal for any number of browsers you have.

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Re: Cookie management :: Why not this?
Posted by: snuz2
Date: January 15, 2007 10:32PM

Quote
Terry
Well, the difficulty with cookie management is that they have to be intercepted prior to the webpage's being displayed.

I'm not sure if I buy this, if the browser is set to reject cookies then they are not stored, in fact in KM, it appears that they are not even accessed if they were previously stored. The task of the script is not to intercept cookies at all ( more about this below ), it only enters the current site into the list of allowed exceptions to the "no cookie" policy, and then reloads the page, storing the cookie. The idea is to use the browser's native cookie blocking more efficiently by making it quick to use. The idea is not to add anaother process in the background that consumes resources.

I'm not familiar with Cookie Pal or Crusher, but the problem I've seen with some of these type programs is that they alert you to incoming cookies, this is, IMHO even worse than just storing them. Virtually all websites will attempt to store a cookie and you have no real way of knowing the purpose of said cookie, so there is no need to decide whether to store it or not. YOu simply try to use the site without the cookie and if it doesn't work you can use someone else's site or put up with granting cookie permissions on your system. So I, personally, see no need to intercept a cookie before it comes in.

I am proposing that rather than a setting that enables/disables cookies as you browse, cookies would be disabled at all times. The privacy setting becomes a command to allow/deny a specific site's cookie permissions by entering it or deleting it from your prefs file. That's all it does.

If the site doesn't work, you push the button and it reloads with cookies. done. It would be nice to have an indication as you browse (similar to the security highlighting in the address bar for instance ) of sites that had cookie priveledges. Like IE's zones for sites. The big difference here is how a site is placed in a zone and, can that be done in such a way that the site can not place itself in the "trusted" zone.

I am surprised that there is not more enthusiasm out there for this, am I the only one who thinks this is a problem? What are other user's solutions?

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Re: Cookie management :: Why not this?
Posted by: guenter
Date: January 16, 2007 04:13PM

I do not care. But i think You would get FFox extensions (cookieculler) working.

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Re: Cookie management :: Why not this?
Posted by: Arrow
Date: January 16, 2007 10:32PM

Hello hope you have a sense of humour for my first suggestion

"I am proposing that rather than a setting that enables/disables cookies as you browse, cookies would be disabled at all times."


After you have stored all the main cookies you want, set the cookie file attribute to read only, then when you want to store a cookie run a batch file from a keyboard shortcut to remove read only attribute & then refresh the webpage, Use another batch shortcut to restore read only.


My real solution is I have for a long time used agnitum outpost firewall's active content filter [An excellent firewall btw]

You can globally disable cookies with the filter [as well as other active content elements] and allow cookies and other active elements on a per site basis.

The only drawback is that the interface to get to the exclusion list requires 3 clicks, but no hardship because not many sites outside of my regulars require cookies for functionality.

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Re: Cookie management :: Why not this?
Posted by: snuz2
Date: January 17, 2007 12:31AM

Actually, I think that the first suggestion
Quote
Arrow
when you want to store a cookie run a batch file from a keyboard shortcut to remove read only attribute & then refresh the webpage, Use another batch shortcut to restore read only.
is quite good, since a batch file probably isn't even needed. I did some poking around last night with the macro file and I think this can be run from a macro using exec(attrib...) and the macro could also refresh the page! No resources consumed!

What I found out last night was that I could add host entries to the host permissions file on the fly from a macro, but they did not take effect until KM restarts. This is unlike adding permissions in the dialog which are in effect when you close it. I did not find a way to access the KM permission dialogs/interfaces from the macro file at all.

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