Citizensheep » tutorial http://citizensheep.com/blog Michael Grimes lives in Birmingham (UK). This is his blog about anything that he fancies. Wed, 23 May 2012 15:29:35 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Identifying the cookies your website sets http://citizensheep.com/blog/2012/04/16/identifying-the-cookies-your-website-sets/ http://citizensheep.com/blog/2012/04/16/identifying-the-cookies-your-website-sets/#comments Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:20:47 +0000 Michael http://citizensheep.com/blog/?p=3503

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    • ]]>     There has been a flurry of people telling us that we need to react to the change in cookie law, and that we must audit our cookies first. That’s all very well, but how? How do we find out what cookies our websites are setting?

    Here I give some ways of finding that out. I’ve done it for three Windows browsers (the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome). It’s imperfect because in other tools I was given slightly different results (this may be to do with caching, I don’t know), but it’s a start.

    Internet Explorer 9

    1. Visit the website you want to find cookies for.
    2. Press F12, or click Tools > F12 developer tools. The screen should split in two.
    3. In the lower half of the newly split screen, click Cache > View cookie information.
    4. In the main browser window you should now see a list of those cookies that are set by that site. You don’t get as much information as you do in other browsers, but it’s a good start.

    Chrome

    1. Visit the website you want to find cookies for.
    2. Click CTRL + SHIFT + I, or click the spanner icon then select Tools > Developer tools. The screen should split in two.
    3. In the lower half of the newly split screen, click Resources.
    4. Expand the ‘Cookies’ menu and click on the domain name of the site you want cookies for.
    5. You should see a table of all the cookies being set by that website, including the domains they’re being set from (ie which are set directly and which are set by third parties).

    Firefox

    I offer you two possible routes for Firefox. The first requires the Web Developer extension, the second requires the Firebug  and Firecookie extensions.

    Web Developer extension
    1. Install the Web Developer extension.
    2. Visit the website you want to find cookies for.
    3. Click ‘Cookies’ in the Web Developer toolbar, or go to Tools > Web Developer > Cookies > View cookie information tools. The screen should split in two.
    4. In the lower half of the newly split screen, click Resources.
    5. You should now see a list of those cookies that are set by this site, similar to that shown by IE 9. You don’t get as much information as you do using Firebug (see below), but it’s a good start.
    Firebug extension
    1. Install the Firebug extension.
    2. Install the Firecookie extension.
    3. Visit the website you want to find cookies for.
    4. Press F12. The screen should split in two.
    5. In the lower half of the newly split screen, click Cookies.
    6. You should now see a table of those cookies that are set by this page only.
    7. However, you can export all the site cookies as a tab-delimited text file by clicking the ‘Cookies’ drop-down in the sub-menu.
    ]]>     http://citizensheep.com/blog/2012/04/16/identifying-the-cookies-your-website-sets/feed/ 3     YUI Graded Browser Support http://citizensheep.com/blog/2010/06/25/yui-graded-browser-support/ http://citizensheep.com/blog/2010/06/25/yui-graded-browser-support/#comments Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:00:09 +0000 Michael http://citizensheep.com/blog/2010/06/25/yui-graded-browser-support/

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    • ]]>     This page has been around for a good while. I’m flagging it up now because I’m trying to build up a sort of toolkit and primer for colleagues managing websites; the rather unsophisticated ‘every user should have exactly the same experience on our website’ is – sadly and surprisingly – still a common attitude.

    This explanation of Graded Browser Support and ‘progressive enhancement’ from Yahoo! is well put and, coming from Yahoo!, adds credibility to our arguments for it.

    Visit YUI Graded Browser Support

    ]]>     http://citizensheep.com/blog/2010/06/25/yui-graded-browser-support/feed/ 2     A Beginner's Sinatra Tutorial http://citizensheep.com/blog/2010/05/31/a-beginners-sinatra-tutorial/ http://citizensheep.com/blog/2010/05/31/a-beginners-sinatra-tutorial/#comments Mon, 31 May 2010 17:00:11 +0000 Michael http://citizensheep.com/blog/2010/05/31/a-beginners-sinatra-tutorial/

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    • ]]>     In my desperate attempt to grapple with Ruby people keep introducing me to new and 'better' ways to use it, before I've had a chance to understand what I was doing with the previous one they lauded. Currently under my nose is Sinatra, which would probably be great if I understood what I was doing. Anyway, this tutorial seems to make more sense than Sinatra's own help pages.

    Visit A Beginner's Sinatra Tutorial

    ]]>     http://citizensheep.com/blog/2010/05/31/a-beginners-sinatra-tutorial/feed/ 0     Learn to Program (using Ruby) http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/11/01/learn-to-program-using-ruby/ http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/11/01/learn-to-program-using-ruby/#comments Sun, 01 Nov 2009 07:00:02 +0000 Michael http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/11/01/learn-to-program-using-ruby/

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    • ]]>     I'm trying to get my head around Ruby (and Rails, and HAML) and this is proving a good start. Obviously you need Ruby installed first (which wasn't all that straightforward, not in Windows at any rate), but once you've done that it's quite enjoyable.

    Visit Learn to Program (using Ruby)

    ]]>     http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/11/01/learn-to-program-using-ruby/feed/ 0     What is RSS? http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/03/04/what-is-rss/ http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/03/04/what-is-rss/#comments Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:20:33 +0000 Michael http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/03/04/what-is-rss/

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    • ]]>     Explaining to the uninitiated why web feeds are useful is something a lot of us find hard to do. So here I’ve attempted to draw an analogy: with fish.

    I’m not actually going to try and explain what RSS is (or equivalents such as Atom), because it’s a bit technical and has a confusing history complicated by politics.

    Instead I’m going to try explaining what a feed reader does, using an analogical story. I welcome feedback on the usefulness of this.

    —
    Once upon a time there was a vast lake, dense with fish. There were millions of them – of many different species, shapes, colours and sizes – and thousands of new fish appeared every minute.

    Each day huge numbers of people would dive into the lake to look at the fish. But many only wanted to see certain kinds: people interested in blue fish only wanted to see blue fish; people interested in red fish with a fin missing only wanted to see those; and so on.

    Unfortunately there were just too many fish. People were missing the fish they wanted to see, and the fish themselves were not getting the attention they deserved.

    Then one day a group of clever folk invented a special kind of diving goggles. These goggles could be set to display only those fish that met certain criteria. So people who only wanted to see blue fish could now do so with little trouble.

    And because the goggles knew which fish the user liked, they could let them know of other fish that they might find interesting.

    On top of that, the user could fine-tune the goggles to display exactly the fish they wanted to see (for example they could choose not to see Bob Bigfin, who was an annoying blue fish). They could also set the goggles to tell their friends automatically which fish they liked.

    Of course, lots of people thought this was a great idea and started manufacturing their own goggles. Some gave theirs away free of charge, and some sold theirs with extra features.

    And so everyone was able to find what they were looking for in the enormous lake, and discover new fish based on what they already liked.

    And so it is with your feed reader: you can filter the web for what interests you. The difference is that you don’t have to swim around the lake: you see the results all in one place, without having to go back to a website or search engine.

    All you need to do is give the feed reader the address for the feed, be it RSS or Atom (you may be given a number of options for different versions of both: don’t worry too much about which to choose, it won’t make much difference). The feed reader then does the rest for you:  it looks online and displays anything new almost as soon as it’s published.
    —-

    Could this be any use in explaining the virtues of using feeds?

    Update

    6 March 2009: I amended the story in line with the changes I incorporated over at We Share Stuff.

    ]]>     http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/03/04/what-is-rss/feed/ 3     31 Days to Building a Better Blog http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/01/26/31-days-to-building-a-better-blog/ http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/01/26/31-days-to-building-a-better-blog/#comments Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:02:41 +0000 Michael http://citizensheep.com/blog/2009/01/26/31-days-to-building-a-better-blog/ These are my links for 26 January 2009 from 12:46 to 12:46]]> A great set of posts from Problogger showing simple but effective ways of improving your blogging. Watch out, I may try implementing some of them.

    Visit 31 Days to Building a Better Blog

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