Re: LYNX-DEV cookies

[David Woolley]

> I don't know much of anything about cookies either, but I have
> discovered some sites that don't let me proceed unless I have accepted
> certain cookies.  I just tried one of these sites and sure enough,
> don't get when i run with cookies enabled and accept all their cookies.
> 

They are probably using some tool, like Microsoft's Active Server Pages,
which uses cookies behind your back in order to deskill the writing of
CGI type servers which need to store information from page to page.  I don't
think ASP will complain if you don't need the cookies, but it does tend to
send cookies with every page, just in case they will be needed.

You need to look at the pages in question.  If there is a legitimate need
for the contents of a later page (or the total content of a form submission)
to depend on what was entered on previous pages, you are going to have
to accept that people are not going to do their own session handling and
therefore, if the only easy way of doing it in ASP is with cookies, everyone
will do it with cookies.

If it appears that the purpose is a gimmick, or market research, you could
try complaining to the site.  If you do, complain on the basis of objecting
to cookies, and don't mention the browser.  Very few commercial sites, 
particularly those using deskilling tools, can get authorisation for the
budget for supporting Lynx, but objection to cookies is likely to hit their
high spending commercial market more.  (There is probably an assumption
that people using the latest GUI browsers are more likely to be free 
spending.)


(The alternatives to cookies are the use of hidden fields in forms and
specially coded URLs, or the HTTP authentication mechanisms.  The former
may require pages to be generated dynamically, thus frustrating caching.
The latter involves a login procedure which is outside the page author's
artistic control.)
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