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Yes, it's true. Not sure why it's news, other than it's a new article? This has been an abomination since .... the functionality was added. It's hard even fo

Yes, it's true. Not sure why it's news, other than it's a new article? This has been an abomination since .... the functionality was added. It's hard even for geeks to deal with it - it makes 0 sense for non-techies to even contemplate dealing with it. Relatedly, browser UI for dealing with cookies has been abysmal since day 1 as well. Instead of making cookie information easily visisble and manageable, browser makers resorted to shifting cookie mgt stuff around in 'preferences' a few times (is it 'privacy'? or 'advanced'? why not 'cookies'?), and people champion using specific browsers with specific plugins as an optimal solution. Client certs are even worse off - few people even bother to write plugins to deal with this stuff. It's chicken/egg as well - no point in updating browsers to be better if no servers will modify their code to deal with it.

milkmiruku 13y ago
Anyone know the story about where browsers actually are at with these UI bugs then?
Shish2k 13y ago
> Instead of making cookie information easily visisble and manageable How do /you/ suggest making base64 encoded blobs of context-less ID numbers understandable to the average browser user, assuming that they could be persuaded to care in the first place? Even as a geek who knows where to look, I look at the cookies from most sites and have no idea what they mean :P
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  doesn't particular matter if you know what they mean. A sidepanel that can open up at the click of an icon which tells me that 9 cookies were used, and they're set by google and yahoo and bing and 5 sites I've never heard of... that would give a lot of visibility immediately to people. Giving them an option of deleting/removing/blocking right from that sidepanel would empower people to be able to deal with it themselves without having to wade through scary and non-standard menus. Instead, we get a decade of ignoring this and then EU legislation that forces people to put stupid bars at the top ('we track you with cookies, click here to accept') but does pretty much nothing with respect to user education and empowerment. We have 'home' and 'reload' and 'back' and 'forward' buttons. Actually, no, my safari doesn't even have a 'home' right now, but a 'share'. Why not a 'cookie' button. Again, doesn't particularly matter whether you can decipher base64-encoded stuff or not - the average person has no clear way to even understand the number and type of cookie data being tracked, nor an easy way to block/unblock without wading through multiple levels of menus which take them away from the site they're on. Doing this on smartphones would present a challenge, but is not impossible. Doing this is desktop browsers shouldn't be all that hard. We see the data in firebug - parsing out request headers and showing the cookie data (with block/delete/allow options) in a sidebar panel would not be hard. But it won't have any real impact unless it's something built-in to multiple browsers and we have an education period. The late 90's was full of "ban cookies! reject cookies! they're evil!" hype, then we all forgot about it for a while, endured the rise of doubleclick and the like, and got legal solutions vs good UI solutions. :/ EDIT: I hit save too quick. I don't think this will ever happen - at least 2 major browser makers have a vested interest in keeping the ad-based tracking economy moving along - any built-in browser functionality which would interfere with that will never fly. I'm talking about Google and Firefox (which relies a lot on Google's wellbeing re: ad revenue). I imagine MS is in a similar boat, but maybe not to the same degree as Google. I can't speaker for Apple's potential for this, but given the webkit tie between chrome and safari, it's probably unlikely as well.
  - joeyh 13y ago
    When I click on the https padlock on this site, chromium shows me 1 ycombinator cookie and 0 third-pary cookies. In 2 clicks I can block the cookie, if I so choose.
    - mgkimsal 13y ago
      When we all start using SSL for everything, perhaps that's a way to go. If it's so simple, why don't we have a cookie icon up there so that it's visible all the time though? EDIT: it's that way for non-ssl sites too - thank you - I learned something new - I may have to switch to chrome as my primary browser again. :/ It's still not quite as easy as I'd hoped for, because it's mixing cookie data and other stuff in the same popup panel, but it's a start. Having it be a cookie icon so it would be easier to know what you'll get when you click it (perhaps a separate icon) would still be better.
nathan_long 13y ago
>> This has been an abomination since .... the functionality was added. It's hard even for geeks to deal with it - it makes 0 sense for non-techies to even contemplate dealing with it. Are you criticizing the concept or the implementation? Conceptually, for a user to maintain 1 or 2 "identities" on a machine seems easier than maintaining 50 "logins", which already require a password manager if you're using reasonably hard passwords.
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  implementation. that's why it's not being used.

milkmiruku 13y ago

Anyone know the story about where browsers actually are at with these UI bugs then?

Shish2k 13y ago

> Instead of making cookie information easily visisble and manageable How do /you/ suggest making base64 encoded blobs of context-less ID numbers understandable to the average browser user, assuming that they could be persuaded to care in the first place? Even as a geek who knows where to look, I look at the cookies from most sites and have no idea what they mean :P

mgkimsal 13y ago
doesn't particular matter if you know what they mean. A sidepanel that can open up at the click of an icon which tells me that 9 cookies were used, and they're set by google and yahoo and bing and 5 sites I've never heard of... that would give a lot of visibility immediately to people. Giving them an option of deleting/removing/blocking right from that sidepanel would empower people to be able to deal with it themselves without having to wade through scary and non-standard menus. Instead, we get a decade of ignoring this and then EU legislation that forces people to put stupid bars at the top ('we track you with cookies, click here to accept') but does pretty much nothing with respect to user education and empowerment. We have 'home' and 'reload' and 'back' and 'forward' buttons. Actually, no, my safari doesn't even have a 'home' right now, but a 'share'. Why not a 'cookie' button. Again, doesn't particularly matter whether you can decipher base64-encoded stuff or not - the average person has no clear way to even understand the number and type of cookie data being tracked, nor an easy way to block/unblock without wading through multiple levels of menus which take them away from the site they're on. Doing this on smartphones would present a challenge, but is not impossible. Doing this is desktop browsers shouldn't be all that hard. We see the data in firebug - parsing out request headers and showing the cookie data (with block/delete/allow options) in a sidebar panel would not be hard. But it won't have any real impact unless it's something built-in to multiple browsers and we have an education period. The late 90's was full of "ban cookies! reject cookies! they're evil!" hype, then we all forgot about it for a while, endured the rise of doubleclick and the like, and got legal solutions vs good UI solutions. :/ EDIT: I hit save too quick. I don't think this will ever happen - at least 2 major browser makers have a vested interest in keeping the ad-based tracking economy moving along - any built-in browser functionality which would interfere with that will never fly. I'm talking about Google and Firefox (which relies a lot on Google's wellbeing re: ad revenue). I imagine MS is in a similar boat, but maybe not to the same degree as Google. I can't speaker for Apple's potential for this, but given the webkit tie between chrome and safari, it's probably unlikely as well.
- joeyh 13y ago
  When I click on the https padlock on this site, chromium shows me 1 ycombinator cookie and 0 third-pary cookies. In 2 clicks I can block the cookie, if I so choose.
  - mgkimsal 13y ago
    When we all start using SSL for everything, perhaps that's a way to go. If it's so simple, why don't we have a cookie icon up there so that it's visible all the time though? EDIT: it's that way for non-ssl sites too - thank you - I learned something new - I may have to switch to chrome as my primary browser again. :/ It's still not quite as easy as I'd hoped for, because it's mixing cookie data and other stuff in the same popup panel, but it's a start. Having it be a cookie icon so it would be easier to know what you'll get when you click it (perhaps a separate icon) would still be better.

nathan_long 13y ago

>> This has been an abomination since .... the functionality was added. It's hard even for geeks to deal with it - it makes 0 sense for non-techies to even contemplate dealing with it. Are you criticizing the concept or the implementation? Conceptually, for a user to maintain 1 or 2 "identities" on a machine seems easier than maintaining 50 "logins", which already require a password manager if you're using reasonably hard passwords.

mgkimsal 13y ago
implementation. that's why it's not being used.