[whatwg] new idea for web browser standard

Hi.  I'm an e-commerce developer for a couple web sites.  We have long 
been bugged about the whole issue with session ids.  It seems that too 
many of our visitors are simply turning things like Javascript and 
Cookies off.  Javascript we can live without.  Cookies is another 
issue.  So we developed the system to not rely on cookies.  Now wherever 
you go on our site, a session id follows you via the url.  While this 
seems to work, it just isn't pretty.  I've checked out Amazon and a few 
others and they use the same technique.

So I got to thinking, what if it was the browser's job to provide a web 
site with a valid session id.  One that the site's server had no control 
over.  The browser could generate a unique id based on the url and a 
keyphrase that gets setup when the browser is installed.  Then site 
developers could use it if they needed.  What I think is nice about this 
is that the browser would provide a unique id for Amazon, google, etc.  
The cookie problem goes away (where sites track you from site to site) 
and ugly urls become a thing of the past.  The browser could also do 
further checks as in only providing the url it is visiting with a 
session id and not that damn tracking graphic installed on some sites 
from doubleclick or whatever is the current "bad guy".  (you know, the 
reason people stopped trusting cookies to begin with)

I really think this is a great idea and could work.  I also think it 
would be really easy for a browser to implement.  What do you think? 

Josh Bauguss

Received on Friday, 2 July 2004 09:26:33 UTC