We have released a new version of Cookiepie firefox extension available for download, and we have a number of features and a long wish list from users that we hope can be introduced in next months. Also we are designing some T-Shirts for our Cookiepie fans! More updates will be notified in the Cookiepie mailing list
Cookiepie is one of the favorite Firefox extensions for web developers and users of webmail services like Google Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail.Web developers use cookiepie to test their sites.In the past, if a site (e.g. home banking, community site) required extensive testing simulating many different users, the developer needed to open different browsers. Currently all browsers, including Firefox, have just one place to store cookies.Some users of webmail services have more than one web account to log into. People are using each web account for different purposes but they can’t login to the same site at the same time in the same browser.The Cookiepie Firefox Extension is a solution to this problem, as it allows users to log into different webmail accounts on separate tabs. Try it with two or more of your Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail accounts.This new release fixes problems experienced in Gmail 2.0, and supports many complex sites like the new Yahoo mail. Even webmail embedded chat is working now!We have made a short video so you can see it in action:
Cookiepie is Free Open Source Software under the GPLv2 license. You can install it now from Nektra Cookiepie site.Please, if you have comments leave them in our group here. We would particularly like to hear about your experience with other sites, such as Facebook. We are making a list of supported websites.
Sebastian Wain from Nektra has submitted CookiePie extension to Firefox Extend Contest with great expectations to be one of the finalists, since it is an innovative piece of software and push beyond the standard capabilities of Firefox. Although it doesn’t came finalist he waited for the announcements to release it publicly without publishing it on Internet until now.Mauro Asprea from Nektra has been contributing on improving user experience.
What is CookiePie?
CookiePie is a firefox extension enabling you to maintain different cookies storage in different tabs and windows.
For example: Toogle CookiePie in three tabs, and login to different GMail account in both.
Where the idea came from?
We need to use it internally at Nektra, and finally decide to publish it for the community.
What does CookiePie means for the end user?
It means that you can for example open multiple GMail/Yahoo Mail/Hotmail accounts in different tabs and windows simulteanously.
What does CookiePie means for web developers?
Developers working on Web Software supporting multiple users or profiles can use CookiePie to simultaneusly test their software with each user without needing to open a different browser.
How CookiePie was made?
A first look at the FireFox extensions capabilities let us think this extension was almost impossible to do. One of the limitations was the unconnected parts between http transactions and UI being difficult to correlate an UI to a specific http request/response, more when AJAX/XmlHttpRequest (i.e: GMail) is involved.
The work involved mainly short term research and trying to push to the extreme FireFox capabilities without knowing nothing of Mozilla Extensions at the start of development.
What are the current known limitations:
Gecko 1.8.1 has some implementation errors: FireFox store cookies although our http observer changes the response header. This means the common cookies are changed in the FireFox extensions for every transaction on each tab. More information at: Mozilla Bugzilla
The reordering of tabs is breaking GMail account opened tabs.
GMail has added after we finish this extension, an alert we hope to repair it so GMail doesn’t know about another connection on another tab or window.
User may experience problems with another Firefox extensions (for example Tab Mix Plus)
What are the features we would like to have in the future?
Listen to users feedback.
Complete Cookie commitment to standards/security
Compatibility to another extensions.
Add configuration options
Enable CookiePie by default
Cookies inheritance checkbox: If a user opens a new tab/window from a CookiePie tab, the new opened tab can inherit the cookie container.
Cookie pipeline handling: Have a configuration like the Firefox option to choose what cookies needs to be individualized and what cookies needs to be used from the firefox container.
Persist/Save/Load Tab Cookies
Code: better & cleaner.
Testing: Test & Fix in complex scenarios.
What we suggest for future versions of Firefox?
We suggest to have this capability embedded natively on Firefox and not as a third party addin. We know this will involve changing relations between objects in Firefox but it’s an obvious step to do in the browser war.
What platforms are supported?
Currently it ran fine on Windows and Linux. We need to check why Mac is not supported because this software is standard JS code, not platform dependent.
