Are cookies enabled in public librarys, universities, businesses, etc.?

That's my question... the following is optional reading.

Most visitors to my site use my calories burned calculator. It uses cookies to keep track of your age, sex, weight, etc. so you don't have to re-enter them each visit. A convenience. But the calculator works without cookies.

My new calculator gives the calories etc. in foods. The database is so big that it is divided into separate lists for meats, bakery, etc. Rather than have a webpage for each list, I have only one webpage which conditionally loads the desired list based on a cookie setting. When you want to change lists, a cookie is written to specify the desired list and then the page is reloaded.

Without cookies enabled, this fails. You always return to the default list rather than going to the one you selected.

With the new calculator it is not just a matter of convenience; it will fail if cookies aren't enabled. So I am wondering if they are enabled at public libraries, university computer systems, business computer systems, and so on.

I can imagine them being disabled at a public library. Otherwise with the constant change in users the disk would fill with cookies. On the other hand, many sites depend on cookies. Perhaps the computers are set to delete a user's cookies at the end of their session?

Thanks for your ideas on this,

Peter

From what I've seen in schools and other public places, cookies usually aren't disabled or handled any differently than usual. The problem is that you had better be using session cookies only, otherwise the users info will be kept on the system even after they leave the station.

Where I work, cookies are enabled in all public labs. In order to ensure privacy, all user information is wiped when the computer is rebooted. In this regard, we may likely be the exception.

At my work cookies are enabled by default.

And like goose said, just make sure to use session cookies and you'll be okay.

As an alternative, what about using query strings instead of using cookies to load the lists? Or sending the data via POST to the next page?

Don't have a clue what either of those two methods are. If either are server-side, I only use client-side stuff. It's all I've been able to learn (teach myself) so far.

Thanks, Peter

Okay, and yes they are server side methods, although you might be able to use query strings in javascript.. i dunno though.

For your information, a query string is like the "?listID=6" on the end of the url. And post is if you were to have the list selector in a form and you submit the form to the page that generates the list and it can tell what you selected on the previous page.

If you want to make it easy for your users ad still respect there privacy, then you need to learn some server sided codig.

The database is so big that it is divided into separate lists for meats, bakery, etc. Rather than have a webpage for each list, I have only one webpage which conditionally loads the desired list based on a cookie setting. When you want to change lists, a cookie is written to specify the desired list and then the page is reloaded.
:confused: This sounds harder to me then making a small db-driven app of a few pages.

It probably will not take you a week to get the bsics of PHP or ASP and to be able to pull something like that off.

I'm sure I'll eventually have to go server side. It's taking much too long to load databases and search through them.

I hope when I learn that someday I will be able to convert the huge databases I am presently creating without re-typing them. Guess the sooner the better.

It was just natural to teach myself HTML and then JS. Beyond that scares me and I don't know where to start.

I'll post/ask again here when I'm ready.

Thanks, Peter