Re: errata for cookie spec

Martijn Koster:
>
>At 9:38 AM +0100 2/7/97, Koen Holtman wrote:
>
>>Servers have no business sharing information without the user's consent, and
>>I therefore see not reason why sharing information in a sneaky way should be
>>particularly cheap or easy.  If they want to share, let them embed the info
>>in a link where the user can see it.
>
>Oh come on -- I thought we had moved beyond that one. That screws up caching,
>bookmarking, indexing etc etc.
>
>Saying "Servers have no business sharing information" is too easy --

But then again, I did not say that.  Note the qualifier "without the user's
consent".

I would have no problem with excite.com having a link `go to webcrawler.com
and take your excite preferences with you'.  I would gladly use such a link.

And a preferences-in-the-webcrawler-URL scheme would not need to screw up
caching, bookmarking, etc etc at all: simply have webcrawler copy the
preferences back to a cookie and redirect to a plain URL:

 [following the `go to...' link on excite.com leads to:]

   |
   V

 GET /import-prefs/textonly&wacky HTTP/1.0
 Host: www.webcrawler.com
 Referer: http://www.excite.com/blah

   |
   V

 HTTP/1.0 302 See other
 Set-Cookie: prefs=textonly&wacky;path=/
 Location: http://www.webcrawler.com/

   |
   V

 GET / HTTP/1.0
 Host: www.webcrawler.com
 Cookie: prefs=textonly&wacky

See?  The only thing you need is a user deciding to click the link.

>-- Martijn

Koen.

Received on Monday, 10 February 1997 15:26:36 UTC