# Why Safari's Not My Main Browser



## Mobius Rex (Jan 7, 2006)

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.


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## WonderFool (Jan 8, 2006)

Mobius Rex said:
			
		

> 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?


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## Lt Major Burns (Jan 8, 2006)

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!


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## fryke (Jan 8, 2006)

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.


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## ecirtap (Jan 8, 2006)

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/


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## adambyte (Jan 8, 2006)

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.


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## Mobius Rex (Jan 8, 2006)

"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.


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## fryke (Jan 8, 2006)

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


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## kainjow (Jan 8, 2006)

Cookies only store information about you that you give the website. It can't extract anything from you that you haven't given to the site already.

If you click an ad, well that's your choice. You chose to tell the advertiser about your interests in their ad. They store that info back on your computer to give you a more interesting selection of ads next time. Would you rather have ads that were of things you were less or more interested in?

I don't get the big deal about cookies. Is it really an invasion of your privacy?


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## Viro (Jan 9, 2006)

I think certain advertising companies use cookies to keep track of your browsing habits, and this is what Mobius Rex is worried about. I know of some ads that place a cookie in your browser's cache, even if you don't click on the ad. If you surf to another site that has an ad by the same company, they can examine the cookie they placed earlier, and see which site you've come from. 

I'm glossing over the details, but that's pretty much what some companies do, hence some see the need for good cookie management.


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## Mikuro (Jan 9, 2006)

fryke said:
			
		

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


Not really. The only settings they offer either A) Allow all sorts of crap you don't want, or B) Deny all sorts of useful things you _do_ want. Nobody should need to make that choice.

This is one more feature the iCab folks nailed years ago that other companies are still clueless about. Oh, if I only I had a browser like iCab with a rendering engine like Safari or Firefox, I'd be in browsing heaven...

You may want to check out *PithHelmet*. Along with tons of other useful features, PithHelmet adds the ability to specify cookie preferences on a site-by-site basis. PithHelmet is nowhere near as flexible and powerful as iCab, but it goes a long way. (_Nothing_ is as flexible and powerful as iCab; iCab's got the Filtering System of the Gods, and everything else pales before its gloriousness!) Without PithHelmet, I consider Safari to be flat-out unusable. With PithHelmet, Safari is my #1 browser, and I hardly ever need a #2.



			
				Mobius Rex said:
			
		

> 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.


I couldn't agree more. I'll never understand how people can be so passive about this, and so critical of people who want to _know_ what the heck is going on with their computer.


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## Mobius Rex (Jan 9, 2006)

The issue, here, really isn't whether or not cookies are an invasion of one's privacy, but should one expect a full range of cookie control in Safari as exists in most other browsers.
All browsers allow, at the minimum, one to choose between either accepting all cookies or denying all cookies.  For many of us, that's not acceptable or practical; some cookies are needed for logging in to forums or bank accounts for example, while other cookies, most other cookies, for whatever reason, are just not wanted.
Whoever wants all cookies accepted certainly has the right to accept all cookies.  But those of us who like to decide, on a case by case basis, which cookies to accept and which to deny should have that process facilitated by an ample range of choices.
I, for one, like to have a minimum of cookies allowed and stored in my browsers. Most browsers make that process smooth and easy.  Safari doesn't.
And, regarding ads, I personally would prefer an ad free environment.  But that's not gonna happen.


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## fryke (Jan 10, 2006)

Sorry, but both of you seem to be forgetting the third setting of only accepting cookies from sites you visit. Really: It's good for 99.99% of all people and cases. Now if it ain't good enough for you: I understand that. File bug reports to Apple, write E-Mails to them, create threads like this one, that's fine. But I really, really think that Apple's three options are good for basic users. Safari is not the be-all end-all solution to webbrowsing. It's a simple default browser. Anyone's free to choose Firefox or OmniWeb over it.

Simple, fast, feature-laden. Choose two.


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## sinclair_tm (Jan 14, 2006)

i only use safari on my mac.  i say only goto websites that don't spam you w/cookies, and there is nothing to worry about.  or you could always do it the manual way and open the file that houses the cookies and delete the ones you don't want.  i like the fact the safari uses the k.i.s.s. method to deal w/cookies, much less of a headache for me.


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## Mobius Rex (Jan 15, 2006)

I've been trying out PithHelmet with Safari for the past several days and it's really quite good!(thanks Mikuro)  It's got some really nice features.
I've set it to block all ad and Doubleclick-type cookies, and to delete all new cookies after closing Safari. Makes Safari quite acceptable to weird folk, like me, who have an aversion to cookies.
I still keep several other browsers installed, though, and use them all at different times.  Safari or another browser will sometimes balk at accessing a website or page, for whatever reason, so I'll choose another browser and find that I can quickly reach that particular destination.


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## fryke (Jan 15, 2006)

With PithHelmet, there's one thing to keep in mind: WhenEVER you update Safari or Mac OS X, you have to _disable_ PithHelmet and wait for an update to be released. We've had one thousand too many people on this board who after an update said things like "OS 10.3.9 Update killed Safari" or things like that &#8211;*and all of the cases were because PithHelmet failed with a new version of Safari that was included with the update.


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## Lt Major Burns (Jan 15, 2006)

it turns itself off now, with every update.  10.4.4 is not compatible just yet, so i'm having to put up with adverts.


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## billbaloney (Jan 15, 2006)

PithHelmet sounds like a good tool, but I go for a more global solution -- a proxy to filter all of my browser connections.  Being a web developer, I tend to switch through browsers fairly often to test pages (mine or others') and surf, so a solution glued to one browser doesn't cut it.

Privoxy is my filter solution of choice, an actual proxy server that runs on OS X and is configurable through a web interface.  Check it out if you've never considered it.  It's easy to turn on and off via a bookmarklet toggle, and endlessly customizable.  I've been using it for years now with no problems or complaints.


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## Mobius Rex (Jan 16, 2006)

Thanks, Fryke, for the "heads up" re: Pithhelmet and OS 10/Safari updates.  I double checked with the developer and he says the same thing that LtMj Burns posted; Pithhelmet disables itself when updating so there shouldn't be any problems.
Billbaloney, I checked out Privoxy and it looks interesting.  I tried to use it but found myself a bit flummoxed by it.  I'll spend some time with it later on down the road, but right now PitHelmet does the job for me with Safari and I've got my other browsers configured to my satisfaction.


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## billbaloney (Jan 16, 2006)

Give Privoxy a second look in the future if you want (a) a service that's not reliant on a particular version of a particular browser, or (b) a service that maximizes the uniformity of behavior among your browsers.

There are various tutorials on the web for setup on OS X, including this one.


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