Cookies

[Mabden]

OK, let me just say upfront that this is not a troll posting. Or a Jerry
Seinfeld monolog (Whiney Je^H^HNew York accent: "What's up with internet
cookies?! They're not tasty... they don't crumble... Who's making cookies
you can't EAT?! What's up with THAT!??")

So, what is the current consensus on writing cookies to people's machines?

For a while everyone was cookie happy (Cosmo Kramer voice: "Cookies!
Cookies! Yo Yo Ma!"). i.e. "You cannot use this site unless you have cookies
enabled."

Then cookies were evil (Jerry's Newman voice: "Cookies...!"). "The people
don't want The Man tracking them, Man."

What's the current trend? Do you use cookies on your site? Do you ask users
first? How long do you "enable" them for? Should I use them to track trivial
things, like the session ID to find repeat visitors, or the last time you
were here ("Welcome back! You've been gone 14 days and 12 minutes!") Or is
that creepy?

I have a site that doesn't require cookies until you customize the page via
my options link. You can set the color and font of the page, etc. at which
point I put a cookie on your machine that is good for about 16 months (500
days) at which point I guess your options will disappear (I've never
actually seen it happen, as I visit the site myself before that time).

I guess it's like the whole JavaScript question - i.e. What if the user has
JS disabled...

Any thoughts?

 

[Mabden]

OK, let me just say upfront that this is not a troll posting. Or a Jerry
Seinfeld monolog (Whiney Je^H^HNew York accent: "What's up with internet
cookies?! They're not tasty... they don't crumble... Who's making cookies
you can't EAT?! What's up with THAT!??")

So, what is the current consensus on writing cookies to people's machines?

For a while everyone was cookie happy (Cosmo Kramer voice: "Cookies!
Cookies! Yo Yo Ma!"). i.e. "You cannot use this site unless you have cookies
enabled."

Then cookies were evil (Jerry's Newman voice: "Cookies...!"). "The people
don't want The Man tracking them, Man."

What's the current trend? Do you use cookies on your site? Do you ask users
first? How long do you "enable" them for? Should I use them to track trivial
things, like the session ID to find repeat visitors, or the last time you
were here ("Welcome back! You've been gone 14 days and 12 minutes!") Or is
that creepy?

I have a site that doesn't require cookies until you customize the page via
my options link. You can set the color and font of the page, etc. at which
point I put a cookie on your machine that is good for about 16 months (500
days) at which point I guess your options will disappear (I've never
actually seen it happen, as I visit the site myself before that time).

I guess it's like the whole JavaScript question - i.e. What if the user has
JS disabled...

Any thoughts?

Oh, and one more thing....

Does the 300 cookie limit still exist? I mean, we're on <huge number> GB
hard disks now, does the browser still worry about a meg of storage?

 

[Weyoun the Dancing Borg]

OK, let me just say upfront that this is not a troll posting. Or a Jerry
Seinfeld monolog (Whiney Je^H^HNew York accent: "What's up with internet
cookies?! They're not tasty... they don't crumble... Who's making cookies
you can't EAT?! What's up with THAT!??")

So, what is the current consensus on writing cookies to people's machines?

I don't see a problem with it as long as it's there for purposes of
customisation or to remember individual settings. Using them to track
users for marketting purposes though, I consider wrong.

For a while everyone was cookie happy (Cosmo Kramer voice: "Cookies!
Cookies! Yo Yo Ma!"). i.e. "You cannot use this site unless you have cookies
enabled."

Then cookies were evil (Jerry's Newman voice: "Cookies...!"). "The people
don't want The Man tracking them, Man."

What's the current trend? Do you use cookies on your site? Do you ask users
first? How long do you "enable" them for? Should I use them to track trivial
things, like the session ID to find repeat visitors, or the last time you
were here ("Welcome back! You've been gone 14 days and 12 minutes!") Or is
that creepy?

Nearly every "professional" site I know uses them. Google for one,
banking sites, shopping sites, forums, Email sites...

I have a site that doesn't require cookies until you customize the page via
my options link. You can set the color and font of the page, etc. at which
point I put a cookie on your machine that is good for about 16 months (500
days) at which point I guess your options will disappear (I've never
actually seen it happen, as I visit the site myself before that time).

I guess it's like the whole JavaScript question - i.e. What if the user has
JS disabled...

Any thoughts?

If the suer has cookies disabled that's their choice. Like Javascript, I
think that users that disable it are really cutting off their nose to
spite their face. Disabling Javascript is more common - those who diable
cookies would find browsing any "service" site difficult, or more of an
effort that it needs to be imo.

 

[Neal]

If the suer has cookies disabled that's their choice.

Extremely funny typo, considering what could happen if you don't have a
statement about cookies on your site...

 

[Mabden]

Extremely funny typo, considering what could happen if you don't have a
statement about cookies on your site...

I had to read that twice, myself.

machines?

I don't see a problem with it as long as it's there for purposes of
customisation or to remember individual settings. Using them to track
users for marketing purposes though, I consider wrong.

Well, I'm really thinking of using them for my own purposes as well. Like to
track people who return to my site. I find that with broadband, user IPs
change all the time, and I'd like a cookie to say, "Oh this guy is back"
instead of, "Oh another new user" so I can get a sense of new vs. recurring
users on my site.

But what about the 300 cookie limit? I don't want to annoy people by saving
a useless (to them) cookie that wipes out a valid, useful cookie from
someone's machine.

Also, in regards to the whole screen size issue, I was going to save the
user's screen height/width to see what the dominant size is. I don't see a
way to do that once the page is delivered, except to write a cookie via
JavaScript and reading next time they come in. Is this even possible in JS,
or is there a better way to do this?

 

[Whitecrest]

So, what is the current consensus on writing cookies to people's machines?

Whats the use of them? Virtually nothing you can do with them, that you
can't do without them.

 

[Mabden]

machines?

Whats the use of them? Virtually nothing you can do with them, that you
can't do without them.

I use them on my little Quotes page to let the user set display preferences:

http://quotes.sitenook.com/Options.asp?Cat=FORTUNE&Num=3227

That way you're not stuck with my personal choices.

But the original post was more about whether it's ethical or not-nice or
bad-practice or whatever to just put a cookie on a user's machine that is of
no real benefit to them, just so I can see that they were here, or when they
were last here for my own curiosity / usage.

Anybody have comments?

 

[Jeff Thies]

machines?

Whats the use of them? Virtually nothing you can do with them, that you
can't do without them.

How do you track state? How do you make a shopping cart without that? That
pretty much leaves you with frames or passing an id on the query string to
every page. Note that some cookies are temporary and never written to the
hard disk, session ids typically work that way.

Most people would be much better served with using a program like AdAware or
Spybot that destroys the other evil changes to windows as well as the
marketing/tracking cookies, while leaving login or preference cookies.

Jeff

 

[Jeff Thies]

But what about the 300 cookie limit?

That's suggested minimum, the actual number is left up to the browser. Look
in /windows/cookies to see how many IE has stored. I have over 1000.

I don't want to annoy people by saving
a useless (to them) cookie that wipes out a valid, useful cookie from
someone's machine.

Also, in regards to the whole screen size issue, I was going to save the
user's screen height/width to see what the dominant size is. I don't see a
way to do that once the page is delivered, except to write a cookie via
JavaScript and reading next time they come in. Is this even possible in JS,
or is there a better way to do this?

Javascript is the only way I know of. I use it myself to serve up images
based on browser size. Check the FAQ in comp.lang.javascript for suggested
code.

You may wish to see what enviornment variables are sent back from the
browser. This would be server side and how this is done depends on your
scripting environment. I don't recall seeing a window size though.

Jeff

 

[Mitja]

I had to read that twice, myself.


Well, I'm really thinking of using them for my own purposes as well.
Like to track people who return to my site. I find that with
broadband, user IPs change all the time, and I'd like a cookie to
say, "Oh this guy is back" instead of, "Oh another new user" so I can
get a sense of new vs. recurring users on my site.

But what about the 300 cookie limit? I don't want to annoy people by
saving a useless (to them) cookie that wipes out a valid, useful
cookie from someone's machine.

Also, in regards to the whole screen size issue, I was going to save
the user's screen height/width to see what the dominant size is. I
don't see a way to do that once the page is delivered, except to
write a cookie via JavaScript and reading next time they come in. Is
this even possible in JS, or is there a better way to do this?

There are ways...
JS could do something like document.write('<img
src="your_stats_script.cgi?width=xxx&height=xxx'). Server-side script
your_stats_script.cgi should log the passed parameters and return an 1x1
transparent gif image.

 

[Weyoun the Dancing Borg]

How do you track state? How do you make a shopping cart without that? That
pretty much leaves you with frames or passing an id on the query string to
every page. Note that some cookies are temporary and never written to the
hard disk, session ids typically work that way.

Most people would be much better served with using a program like AdAware or
Spybot that destroys the other evil changes to windows as well as the
marketing/tracking cookies, while leaving login or preference cookies.

oh he's just one of those people that think the entire net shoul dbe
written in plain text and the only images should be ASCII ones.

 

[Whitecrest]

oh he's just one of those people that think the entire net shoul dbe
written in plain text and the only images should be ASCII ones.

ROFLMAO!!! Yea, you nailed me, I want an all text web......

 

[Weyoun the Dancing Borg]

Also, in regards to the whole screen size issue, I was going to save the
user's screen height/width to see what the dominant size is. I don't see a
way to do that once the page is delivered, except to write a cookie via
JavaScript and reading next time they come in. Is this even possible in JS,
or is there a better way to do this?

Well you could do that but you don't need to - the average size is
between 800x600 and 1024x768.

Designing the best wensite for usability would mean it was scalable, and
would work in just about any resolution. Some here will say it must be
usabl;e in 320x240 because of mobile phones and PDAs etc that access the
net but apart from 40 year old men in a midlife crisis I can't think of
many people that actually surf the net a *lot* using tiny gadgets.
Except Japan.

Except for flash sites, it's a bad idea to design a site for just one
resolution anyway. I have never made a Flash site, but I've used Flash
before - if you don't specify the size of an animation or link just to
thw SWF file then it maximises anyway to fill the browser window, I
don't know if a Flash Site can do the same. But you weren't asking about
flash anyway )

 

[Weyoun the Dancing Borg]

ROFLMAO!!! Yea, you nailed me, I want an all text web......

I hope I didn't cause offense

 

[Mark Parnell]

I hope I didn't cause offense

Do you think he'd ROFLHAO if he was offended?

 

[Whitecrest]

I hope I didn't cause offense

No, no offence taken at all. I am probably the most vocal person in
this forum AGAINST an all text web, which is why I thought it was so
funny.