Konqueror for KDE 2 is the web browser which currently comes the closest to implementing a sane cookie policy. The naive user, when using Konqueror, will typically first encounter cookies when the following dialog box pops up:
KDE 2.0 (December 2000)
![[Konqueror cookie accept/reject dialog, 27K PNG]](cookies-select-dialog.png)
KDE 2.1 (March 2001)
![[Konqueror cookie accept/reject dialog, 3K PNG]](cookies-alert-0.png)
![[Konqueror cookie accept/reject dialog, 7K PNG]](cookies-alert-1.png)
Flaws in this dialog box:
- I believe that having "Accept" as the default choice is wrong.
- It should not be so easy to apply "Accept" to all cookies, regardless of domain. This is a very insecure setting.
- It does not distinguish between third-party cookies and self-serve cookies. It's possible, though I will have to go look in the source again, that Konqueror may be hard-wired to reject third-party cookies altogether...
Nevertheless, this dialog is still much, much better than what Navigator or Explorer do. One learns to click "Reject" (or use Alt-R) by reflex pretty quickly. The dialog box also remembers which of the radio buttons was last used, so for example if you usually choose "Apply to all cookies from this domain", this is the radio button that will be initially selected.
What if you want to change your security settings? Well, it would be nice if cookie settings were brought up as an option when you cliecked the "Security" button, but here's where the settings are:
![[Cookies settings menu selection, 26K PNG]](cookies-menu-selection.png)
It's not nested deep in the bowels of Konqueror configuration. As Konqueror grows, so will the number of configuration options; I hope this will not lead the programmers to nest this more deeply.
When you get to the configuration dialog, it looks like this:
KDE 2.0 (December 2000)
KDE 2.1 (March 2001)
(By the way, yes, these windows are resizable, in case you want to see something that scrolls off the right side.)
Pretty sensible. Since Konqueror is not entirely mature, the Help documentation is not fully written, but I believe this will be remedied soon. Notice the number of "Reject" entries---why do all these sites think that I want to volunteer to have my behavior tracked? It's obnoxious, and user agents that allow users to say "no" conveniently are urgently needed.
For completeness, here's the cookie policy change dialog:
