A vignette about internet rage, in search of productive solutions

[lorimt]

Hmm... that looks like an interesting. [click link] Oh, it wants a cookie. Sure, whatever. [click accept for session, with ticky box ticked] Another cookie, mutter, OK. [click same] Another one?! Arg! I don't even care about this page. [clicky, clicky, clicky, clicky] ARG! JUST STOP COMING UP LONG ENOUGH FOR ME TO CLOSE THE TAB! DIE! [clicky, clicky, clicky, clicky, clickty, clickity, clikity click] Gah. Finally. [reads mediocre article, closes tab, salts earth, vows never to come back].


I assume I'm not the only one this happens to. It's hardly fair to the poor website, which presumably doesn't deserve this much rage. Am I doing something wrong? Is there a fix for this?

In general, when I'm browsing, I leave the ticky box saying do this all the time ticked, and I'm usually accepting cookies for the session to avoid having to go back and un-blacklist things that turn out not to work w/o cookies while not just accepting them constantly. What I'd ideally like is a way to get Firefox to give focus back to the tab so I can close it (or even just read other tabs, rather than watching the clicky box). Is there a setting or plug-in that helps? I generally like Firefox, but if other browsers are better, do let me know. Alternately if there's a good reason to always accept/reject, I think there's already a way to do it automatically, but it seems like it might be a nuisance just as often.

Comments

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

Once I opened LiveJournal in Chrome and an unknown error opened a theoretically infinite number of tabs. It stopped eventually, I think due to running out of memory.

My Internet Explorer and Firefox are currently broken, so I can only use chrome and safari. I like chrome ok but there are a few sites it doesn't work well with still. I don't know if it's better than firefox, because, er, it's better than *broken firefox*.

[lorimt]

Eeg. The Chrome thing sounds like the nightmare version of my problem above. I think the only time I started opening "infinite" copies of something, it was because I was leaning on the space or return key without looking. I should probably poke at Chrome again - I think the first time I looked it didn't like Macs or some such. It's been a while.

[mbrubeck.livejournal.com]

I use "always accept" - any page that really wants to track me will do so by some other means (IP addresses, browser fingerprinting, Flash DSOs...), so I don't think there's a noticeable impact to my privacy from enabling or disabling cookies.

When I really don't want to be tracked (or when I want to log into an important site and not expose its cookies to attacks from elsewhere) I use Firefox's private browsing mode or Chrome's incognito window.

NoScript is probably the most useful tool if you want to browse in a highly private/protected mode and are willing to toggle some extra checkboxes on sites that need it.

[lorimt]

This makes sense. I have vague philosophical objections to all the stuff cookies can be used to do, but it's true site-owners can just use other methods if they really want.

[vrable.livejournal.com]

I set Firefox (well, Iceweasel, but it's the same) preferences so that cookies expire at the end of the session. So no cookies on my computer last more than about a day because I generally start fresh each morning.

It does mean I have to re-login everywhere, but I don't mind that too much and it provides some protection without a barrage of dialog boxes while browsing.

[gwillen.livejournal.com]

I love the fact that Chrome finally added, to the 'alert' popup box, a checkbox for 'never let this site show me an alert again'. (There are joke sites out there that hose your browser by just popping up alerts continuously, resulting in an effect much like the one you are describing...)

[telso.livejournal.com]

I looked into this a while ago, and, iirc (too lazy/late to check), because the page needs to know whether its cookie was accepted or not to decide what to do next (even though most of the time and in the cases at hand, we don't care and it probably would show the same thing if we accepted or declined and it could be done last), the design decision was to make cookie requests modal (requires input before continuing, instead of non-modal things like password remember requests, which can wait till the user responds).

I, and many people (in one of those bugzilla revolts), disagree(d) that we need to respond to the cookie request for the page to load, and think it should be non-modal, but that was shot down in the eventual fix (meaning the still unimplemented general fix won't affect cookies), so we're essentially in a "WONTFIX/if you're one of the tiny percentage of people who care about cookie requests, you can deal with this annoyance" state.

Unfortunately, I have no solution in there, but at least you know one is unlikely to be forthcoming. I find, however, that denying nearly everything works well: the sites I trust that I need to log into are accepted (once, forever), while everything else is denied, and doing this I only have to un-blacklist about once every week or two, and I browse a lot. I feel that's more privacy protective than temporarily accepting everything (which, I thought, you could auto-do).