Why Safari's Not My Main Browser

[Mobius Rex]

Monitoring cookies is very important to me. Unlike most other browsers, Safari offers pathetically meager control over cookies. There's "accept all", "deny all" or "accept only from sites you navigate to". That's it. No option to allow one to accept or deny cookies on the fly, before they are set.
Check out Opera's ample menu of cookie controls; one can even choose to have new cookies accepted for the session and then deleted when Opera is exited.
And Camino, as well as Firefox, while not offering quite as extensive cookie control options as Opera, are still ahead of Safari in this respect.
Why Safari still lags most other browsers in cookie control options is a mystery.

[WonderFool]

Originally Posted by Mobius Rex

Monitoring cookies is very important to me. Unlike most other browsers, Safari offers pathetically meager control over cookies. There's "accept all", "deny all" or "accept only from sites you navigate to". That's it. No option to allow one to accept or deny cookies on the fly, before they are set.
Check out Opera's ample menu of cookie controls; one can even choose to have new cookies accepted for the session and then deleted when Opera is exited.
And Camino, as well as Firefox, while not offering quite as extensive cookie control options as Opera, are still ahead of Safari in this respect.
Why Safari still lags most other browsers in cookie control options is a mystery.

I agree with you entirely. Monitoring cookies is an important part of controlling the web experience. If I "Deny all", I'm safe but I get annoyed because I can log in to a site like this and not stay logged in. If I allow only from sites I navigate to, well, I might navigate to sites but not want cookies! It seems like a lose-lose-lose situation.

But I found a solution you might be interested in - http://pimpmysafari.com/plugins/safariplus offers a freeware called SafariPlus that allows you to designate specific domains to allow cookies from - for me, this is secure enough without getting in my way, and I avoid annoying popups that ask about allowing cookies. If you want to be able to allow/disallow individual cookies, this might not work, but I never came across such a situation.

But anyway, SafariPlus might be a solution that would give Safari a second chance?

[Lt Major Burns]

Safari is a consumer level browser. for the consumer, who doesn't care about techy-geeky stuff, it just works. it has never been high-end-feature-full. at the same time, safari has never been forced upon you (unlike ie for windows), you have always got the option of using the alternatives. hell, Opera is even shipped with macs!

[fryke]

I agree that cookie control could be better. Glad there's an extension to Safari. Thanks wonderfool! I should visit that site more often...

If you _like_ Safari and want a much more powerful and featureful browser, take a look at OmniWeb.

[ecirtap]

I totally agree re the limited cookies options.

I'm still torn between Firefox & Safari...

I love many of the Extensions that are available for Firefox, but I discovered that when I've got Firefox open - displaying about 30+ tabs - it is constantly using about 20 % of my CPU. Safari, on the other hand, even when I've got 60+ tabs open, is down at 0.x %...

patrice
http://www.patriceschneider.com/apple-osx/blog/

[adambyte]

lol. Afraid of cookies? What year is it, 1995?

heh. Sorry. Seriously, what are you doing? I'm curious why one would need such extensive control over cookies.

[Mobius Rex]

"lol. Afraid of cookies? What year is it, 1995?"

No, it's 2006, and intrusions into one's privacy are far more egregious than 10 years ago.
Companies like Doubleclick.Com and the plethora of other filthy parasites like them may believe that one's browsing habits are their business, but I sure as Hell don't!
ANYTHING that enters my Mac via the internet is my business and my business only, and it's up to me and only me to determine if it is acceptable or not.

[fryke]

(Hence the pretty easy to understand rules Apple offers for cookies. They should basically cover all important cases.)