[Ext] Cookie Controller, now with DOM storage

[lithopsian]

Cookie Controller disables on/off configuration items to prevent them being clicked if that would establish an "on" configuration that is more restrictive than the "off" configuration. To select it in the "off" configuration, make sure it is also selected in the "on" configuration. Greyed out simply stops you clicking it and changing the setting. It may still be checked, a tick mark will be visible (unless a theme does weird stuff?), and DOM storage will be enabled (subject to cookie settings). The tooltips will tell you more.

Maybe this is wrong for DOM Storage configuration? Would people want DOM storage enabled when cookies were "off", but disabled when cookies are "on"? Third Party works this way, you can do anything you want with it, although it would be weird to have it disabled for "on" and enabled for "off". The default DOM storage prteferences are currently enabled for both "on" and "off" since the cookie settings control DOM storage anyway. Although you would keep any preferences that you had from a previous version.

A good way to play around with unusual on/off configurations is to use the Tools menu and hold down the ctrl key while you are clicking on different items. The menu will stay open and you can experiment with different settings while both the on and off settings are all visible.

[lithopsian]

Version 1.1 is now available to everyone. Let me know if you see weird things. Behind the scenes, DOM Storage has quite a few glitches and I'm trying to collect and report bugs so they are at least documented.

[LawrenceKing]

I'm trying to figure out whether Cookie Controller can do what I am looking for in an extension.

What I am looking for is actually very simple: I want to easily switch between two cookie-related states. I can already do this using the standard Firefox Options features but it takes too many clicks!

STATE A is to reject all cookies (this is equivalent to un-checking the "Accept cookies from sites" button in FF Options.

STATE B is equivalent to checking "Accept cookies from sites" and setting "Keep Until" to "ask me any time". I love this setting! Cookies that from sites listed as "Allow" in my Exceptions list are silently accepted, cookies from sites listed as "Block" are silently rejected, and cookies from sites that are not yet in my Exceptions list generate a pop-up that asks me what to do.

In other words, all this functionality has been part of Firefox itself since version 2.0. But it just takes so many clicks to switch between the states. And it even takes a lot of clicks to find out my current state if I have forgotten it.

Would Cookie Controller make this easier? If not, does anyone know a different cookie extension that might do this?

[lithopsian]

This is exactly what Cookie Controller is for. There is a button that toggles between two states, and you can define the settings in each state. The states are referred to as "on" and "off" and the button switches from one to the other with a single click. You can configure Firefox to start in either the "On" or "Off" state or whatever state you were in before.

Your State A would be "Off" and the default setting is to deny all cookies so you're good to go.

Your state B would be "On" but you would need to change the default by selecting the menuitem for Ask about cookies. The default settings also allow session cookies without asking and third party cookies (with asking) but you can change those too if you want.

Another button would allow you to see the current cookie permissions for the page you're on and to set or remove exceptions if you want.

The third button allows you to browse through the cookies for the current page and delete some or all of them. You can have these functions on the other two buttons instead if you want to just run with two buttons.

There are additional items on the context menus to go directly to the Firefox exception or cookie dialogs, or about:config with the relevant preferences shown.

[phkhgh]

Does cookie controller have a function to allow cookies "temporarily" - until that web page / tab is closed, similar to Cookie Monster? Or any plans to implement?

Sure, session cookies are OK, except when I wind up at a site that isn't what I thought it was going to be & to use the site, had to allow session cookies (in cookie controller) .
Yes, I could then go into its menu & find that cookie - then del, but for sites I'm fairly certain I may only visit once, temporary cookies are convenient & don't require going thru menus or closing browser to delete them. Or some sites, I want cookies gone ASAP (Google).

I also think CC would be better served to have one main icon in toolbar, that vertically opens other icons / menus, rather than 3 icons always displayed, adding to more & more clutter.
I don't see the logic that all 3 need to be displayed at once.

If every addon dev puts 3 or more icons in toolbar, there won't be enough room & couldn't find anything, anyway. Like some folks have desktop icon for EVERY thing - & can't find ANY thing.

Thanks.

[mangus]

Local storage can be controlled on a per-site basis using cookie exceptions. It obeys cookie exceptions just like it obeys other cookie permissions.

Does it mean that if I allow only first party cookies, third party sites can't access DOM storage too?

I'm currently using Cookie Controller and I think that it makes things easier than Cookie Monster. However neither one can still suit my ideal usage and I wonder if it's just me: I want to deny cookies for all sites and make exceptions for allowing certain sites to set and read only 1st party cookies. The problem is that per-site exceptions allow the site to set or read cookies both in 1st party and in 3rd party manner.
For example, if I deny cookies and make an "allow" exception for facebook.com, the stored facebook cookies are transmitted to facebook even when it acts as a 3rd party; that does not occur if I set Firefox to allow only 1st party cookies, but in this case I have to make too many "deny" exceptions if I want to allow 1st party cookies only for certain sites: it's just inconvenient.
What I can do with Cookie Controller is to deny all cookies and than toggle to "Cookies On" to allow only 1st party cookies for all sites when it's needed. It would be ideal for me to be able to make "allow only 1st party cookie" per-site exceptions. I don't Know if you would like to implement that function in Cookie Controller, but can that be achieved or is it an insuperable limitation of Firefox?

Aside these observations, it would be nice if Cookie Controller could have a 3rd party cookie control similar to that of Cookie Monster: sometimes it can happen that a certain site doesn't work correctly if a 3rd party cookie can't be set, thus that feature could be useful to achieve a more grainy control.

Anyway I'm very pleased with this addon! Thank you.

[lithopsian]

Cookie Controller v1.6 (hopefully reviewed this week) offers the ability to set a site exception to allow a site to set cookies on its own pages, but not on pages from other domains. So you could set such an exception for doubleclick.net, then if you visit http://www.doubleclick.net it can set cookies, but it won't be allowed to set a tracking cookie when you visit http://www.mozilla.org. I think this is what you asked for.

What this setting doesn't do is to create exceptions for pages such that third party cookies can be allowed or denied when you visit a page on a particular domain. I haven't looked at the Cookie Monster code in any detail, but I doubt that it fully implements such a feature, simply because Firefox doesn't offer that level of detail. An implementation would require every cookie to be allowed by Firefox, then intercepted and possibly prevented by the addon. Maybe I should look at what Cookie Monster actually does. Firefox has an outstanding bug to offer this level of control, but it is not making a lot of progress, in no small part because it is a very complex thing to integrate permissions on the cookie domain with permissions on the page domain (and global permissions).

[lithopsian]

I remember now that Cookie Monster uses NoScript-style permissions to control its cookies. I never intended to go this route. It allows for a lot of granularity, but in practice is too complex and intrusive to use. I want Cookie Controller to be usable by almost anyone, almost never having to do anything after installation, and then almost always with just a single click on a button. No point me duplicating something that already exists. You have the choice, which is good

I still want to offer a function to accept or reject third party cookies for particular visited pages rather than based on where the cookie came from, but it won't be several months.

[lithopsian]

The new cookie exception type (Allow first party only) in Firefox 18 breaks the existing cookie exception dialog list. For now, I'm leaving it in Cookie Controller, but be aware that if you use it you will not be able to see a list of your exceptions in the Firefox dialog. Cookie Controller itself should continue to work.

You can access a list of your cookie exceptions, somewhat clumsily because everything else is in there too, through the about:permissions page. Note that about:permissions will show you cookie permissions even for pages where you have not set an exception. It shows every domain for a visited site where any of the permissions for that site are different from the global default. This includes permissions other than cookies, and it includes subdomains where a cookie exception has been set on a parent domain. Thus setting an exception to allow cookies for mozilla.org will cause mozilla.org to show up on about:permissions, but also developer.mozilla.org, forums.mozilla.org, etc. These will be shown with the same exception set for mozilla.org even though they have no exception themselves.

[pohunohi]

How to make that mode Session cookies by pressing this button



cookies from site exceptions allowed, not denied.

[Diamanti]

When i click "Cookie" item menu addon, it show all sites.
Do it is possible to set "find" field default value to current domine?

[mangus]

Cookie Controller v1.6 (hopefully reviewed this week) offers the ability to set a site exception to allow a site to set cookies on its own pages, but not on pages from other domains. So you could set such an exception for doubleclick.net, then if you visit http://www.doubleclick.net it can set cookies, but it won't be allowed to set a tracking cookie when you visit http://www.mozilla.org. I think this is what you asked for.

This is exactly what I wanted. Many thanks!

I remember now that Cookie Monster uses NoScript-style permissions to control its cookies. I never intended to go this route. It allows for a lot of granularity, but in practice is too complex and intrusive to use. I want Cookie Controller to be usable by almost anyone, almost never having to do anything after installation, and then almost always with just a single click on a button.

I think I better appreciate the simplicity of Cookie Controller, so I understand your point.

[lithopsian]

When i click "Cookie" item menu addon, it show all sites.
Do it is possible to set "find" field default value to current domine?

I could do that, but the cookies for the current domain only are already shown by the addon, so I wanted that option to do something different.

[lithopsian]

How to make that mode Session cookies by pressing this button



cookies from site exceptions allowed, not denied.

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. The blue tick already indicates that only session cookies are allowed for this page.

[Diamanti]

I could do that, but the cookies for the current domain only are already shown by the addon, so I wanted that option to do something different.

Addon show cookie name not content that i not can to copy to clipboard.