cookies or ....?

[george at library.caltech.edu]

Once more unto the cookie breach...

While I've questioned the need and appropriateness of cookies in this forum
before, I have always, reluctantly, admitted an occasional need for cookies
to help track states (particularly with respect to database searching) in
the stateless environment of the web.

I just stumbled across an article in New Architect (formerly Web
Techniques):

a cookie by any other name: Is it safe to use cookies again?
by Al Williams
April 2002
<http://www.newarchitectmag.com/documents/s=2412/new1015626767064/>

which begins to delve into alternatives (Platform for Privacy Preferences -
P3P, PHP4 for server side session variable tracking, and JSP's encodeURL
method).

I've been experimenting with the P3P capabilities in Mozilla for the last
several months.  I've enjoyed the ability to decide, either permanently or
on an individual basis, whether to accept cookies from each site the first
time I visit.  After going to CNN once, I never have to worry about turning
away the blitz of cookies every time I go to another page.  On the other
hand, I can enable UMI to store a cookie automatically whenever I venture
into Dissertation Abstracts.

George S. Porter
Sherman Fairchild Library of Engineering & Applied Science
Caltech, 1-43
Pasadena, CA  91125-4300
Telephone (626) 395-3409 Fax (626) 431-2681