Cookies and Web Development

Many lay users get confused by a lot of the names and terminology of the computing world, one of the most prevalent I find in Web Development is cookies, that and a lot of people seem to struggle with "Web Browser" for some reason, but I digress. Cookies are an extremely important part of Web Development relating to user experience, such as remembering session state, allowing them to stay logged in and remembering their setting for that particular site. Cookies are stored in the users web browser and there are a few different types of cookies with varying life spans. You can have cookies, which are deleted after the web browser is closed, or they can persist for a long time and are only deleted after a certain amount of time.

Although cookies sound like they are benign, in the hands of malicious people, they can be used to track a users browser history, which could be used as a way to invade the users privacy. They are a very useful tool and the web is dependent on them for many systems. Most modern browsers have a way of refusing cookies, but this can prevent you from logging into many sites as they require cookies to operate. There has been many different controversies over the use of cookies when it deviates from the norm and is used to track users, for some examples see here.

To create a great websites, it would be remiss for a web developer to ignore cookies as it allows for a great many things to be done when cookies are used responsibly and is another important aspect of web development.