No apparent way to retain selective cookies

[Brummelchen]

firefox is functional as expected - as Mo_D pointed out its your setting and your expectations wont change code a single bit.
allow/deny and 3rd-party until... thats all. if you clear data with ctrl+shift+del you should do es told (Mo_D)

if you want to keep cookies dont let firefox handle cookies - do it by extension, Robert linked to cookie keeper, cookie culler is another one.

HTH

[Mo_D]

Mo_D, thank you. Good sleuthing.

Glad to help. Someone here helped me with it a while back, so I'm happy to pay back to the community.

I hope someone from Mozilla is paying attention.

Not bloody likely.

[beeskeptical]

In fact, this still doesn't work. Despite pretending otherwise, Firefox does not retain cookies I set exceptions for.

And Mozilla's settings are nonsensical. For instance, how is one to reconcile settings to clear history when Firefox closes | but not cookies or site preferences

with

Keep cookies until I close Firefox?

I'm still interested in a solution, if anyone knows one, which will delete cookies except those from websites for which the user sets deliberate allow exceptions. Apart from that, I hope Firefox fixes this buggy system soon.

[kreemoweet]

Firefox's system works fine here doing exactly what you describe, and has been doing so consistently for about 9 years now. All cookies, except those from domains I specify
in the Exceptions list, are set as session cookies (i.e. "keep until Firefox closes"), and disappear when I close Firefox. Couldn't be simpler. The cookies allowed
by the Exception list are NEVER deleted prematurely. Whatever the problem is you're having, it's not with Firefox.

[Mo_D]

@ beeskeptical: I've been using that method that I posted screen shots of for a long time, and it has worked without fail. I don't doubt what you are somehow losing cookies, but I hope you believe me when I tell you that set up will work.

I can think of only a few possibilities why it might not be working:

1- You have some extension installed that is causing it.

2- You have used the dropdown, "History>Clear Recent History" with different settings than those I suggested. If you have your preferences set as I suggested, you can still delete your protected cookies that way.

3- You don't have the preferences set exactly as pictured.

4- You are not being 100% forthcoming, or you have some unrealistic expectation.

I don't like the way it is set up either. And I would like to have some way to delete all unprotected cookies during a session. I used to use Cookie Culler extension, but it's not e10s compatible, so I switched to this method. Whether we like how Firefox is designed is a pointless discussion, and doesn't belong in this forum, so that's all I'm going to say about it. I'd rather stay focused on fixing your problem. There is no other method besides this, barring extensions.

[James]

I hope someone from Mozilla is paying attention. This really underscores just how defective their system is.

To a random thread on this independent forum? pretty slim. http://www.mozillazine.org/about/

Mozilla has their own forum for some years now at support.mozilla.org

[Ed1]

To the OP, I too have been frustrated by this problem for a long time. The Firefox settings on this are certainly less than transparent or obvious.

I have found a solution using the Cookie Sweep addon. It allows me to save cookies I desire to save, yet still set Firefox to both accept cookies and also to delete cookies when I close Firefox.

The result is that cookies other than the ones I have saved as exceptions are deleted when Firefox closes and the saved exceptions are not deleted.

You might give Cookie Sweep a try and report back.

[jaroclay]

Mo_D and kreemoweet, thank you. Good sleuthing.

I hope someone from Mozilla is paying attention. This really underscores just how defective their system is.

I come alongside beeskeptical with thanks to the time and effort put in to resolve this issue. I aslo agree that this shows a flaw in how cookies in FF are handled in today's environment. With more and more logins being authenticated, this is going to become more of an issue.

Ah, the days when things were so much simpler...