[whatwg] Web Storage: apparent contradiction in spec

[Peter Kasting]

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 5:08 PM, Remco <remco47 at gmail.com> wrote:

> As far as I know, cookies work the same way as the proposed local
> storage policy: once a cookie is created, the browser won't delete it
> when space becomes a problem. The site controls the expiration date of
> the cookie, and it can fill up the entire drive with cookies if it
> wants to do so. This is all without user interaction. I don't think
> this has ever been a problem.


This is not at all how cookies work.  All UAs have various limits (e.g. a
per-host and global limit) and purge cookies silently when those limits are
reached.  It is exactly this model which Linus is proposing for Local
Storage.

Cookies disappearing causes problems like users not being logged in when
they return to a site, sites forgetting user preferences, and (importantly
to publishers) ad tracking not working well.  All of these are reasons why
various sites now use Flash to store "cookies" instead/in addition.

PK
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/attachments/20090826/c281661d/attachment-0002.htm>