Cookie 5 beta

SweetP

Hey guys,

heres a new beta:
~~Cookie v5.0l (5.0.0.0.10)~~
Its quite a big update, with many changes:

NEW default option grouping all Favorites into one tab. (Cookie4 style layout still available in Preferences as option "Display Favorites on Separate tabs", also Toolbar can be customised exactly to your liking)
changed wording of Browser Extensions Preference to make it more clear what it does
disabled Remove button when selecting Browser Extensions and "Never remove Browser Extensions" is selected in Preferences
reshuffled Preferences, added a warning onto Advanced tab
added an option to remove all Sandbox permissions on Advanced Preferences Tab
updated Copyright
ui tweaks
code optimisations
UI responsiveness improvements for certain situations
added support for Cookie4 file import! with the following *restrictions:
*no support for Browser specific favs (all Browser favs are grouped and applied to all Browsers)
*no support for import of Browser Extension favorites

please let me know if you find any bugs, Any new features will be added into Cookie v5.1!
Im just looking at making sure its stable now.

mag

One minor thing: With "Text Only" toolbar style used, there's no highlighting of the current tab. With "Icon and Text" & "Icon Only" the icon (of the current tab) would be highlighted in blue, but the text is always black. Is it possible to do something about it?

SweetP

One minor thing: With "Text Only" toolbar style used, there's no highlighting of the current tab. With "Icon and Text" & "Icon Only" the icon (of the current tab) would be highlighted in blue, but the text is always black. Is it possible to do something about it?

Im not sure?
Ill look into this

mag

Also, I'm not sure how is the "Display Favorites on Separate tabs" option supposed to work exactly. When I unselect it, I get only 2 tabs: Removal, Websites; while when selected there are: Removal, Cookies, Databases, Flash, Silverlight. As I understand it, it groups basically everything together, not just favorites, hence the "Display Favorites on Separate tabs" wording seems a little bit confusing and perhaps it should be changed to "Display Entries on Separate tabs" or so.
Perhaps the whole Favorites section in the General Preferences should be changed this way - as I understand it, it doesn't affect favorites only, but everything (at least I consider as favorites only those entries that are specifically checked as favorites)

Another one: when the "Display Favorites on Separate tabs" option is not selected, the tracking cookie counts (the 2nd number between parentheses - shown only if there are such cookies found) is shown in red color. But when that option is selected (so the display of all entries is grouped together) there's no red highlighting anymore - it's all in black.
EDIT: Now I somehow managed to get the opposite - when the display is grouped the number is highlighted in red, when all types of entries are displayed separately it's black. Then when I check (as favorite) some entry that contains tracking cookie, it changes from black to red (e.g. only those that are checked as favorites use red highlighting in the separate view).

EDIT2: Two more issues:

I had the feeling that when I launched the 5.0l beta for the 1st time, the actual display mode was "separate" but in the preferences window it did show the opposite ("Display Favorites on Separate tabs" unchecked). Thus to change the display mode I had to check that option first (which did nothing) and then uncheck it again. After that it did behave correctly - it reflected the selected option in preferences. I tried to reproduce this by deleting the cookie prefs (rm -f ~/Library/Containers/com.sweetpproductions.Cookie5/Data/Library/Preferences/com.sweetpproductions.Cookie5.plist) and was successful with reproducing it then. I compared the plist files for various scenarios and normally it seems that in the "separate" display mode the "TB Item Identifiers" and "availableTabs" properties list all 5 tabs to be displayed ("TB Item Identifiers" contains few more entries) and also "separateTabs" property is set to true.
In "grouped" display mode the "TB Item Identifiers" and "availableTabs" properties list only those 2 tabs to be displayed and "separateTabs" property is absent.

After the very 1st launch (like with com.sweetpproductions.Cookie5.plist deleted) the "TB Item Identifiers" and "availableTabs" properties list all 5 tabs like in "separate" mode, but at the same time the "separateTabs" property is absent like in "grouped" mode.

To me it seems that managing the display mode via 3 properties ("TB Item Identifiers", "availableTabs", "separateTabs") is unnecessarily complicated (especially when first two of these properties contain almost the same data).

The "Removal" tab is the only one that's always shown regardless of whether the display mode is "separate" or "grouped". Thus when I'm at the "Removal" tab, open preferences and change the display mode, the view should stay at that "Removal" tab. Now the view switches elsewhere ("Cookies" or "Websites" depending on the selected mode) which is a little bit annoying. I understand that something like this is inevitable for other tabs, but with "Removal" this shouldn't happen.

cortig

NEW default option grouping all Favorites into one tab. (Cookie4 style layout still available in Preferences as option "Display Favorites on Separate tabs", also Toolbar can be customised exactly to your liking)

I installed the new beta and checked the Preferences.
By default, the "Display Favorites on Separate Tabs" option was unchecked, yet I could still see the different tabs. I had to check then uncheck the option again to see the options grouped in one section only (and I agree, I wouldn't use this phrasing for the Preference. If anything the different sections are not tabs…).

Corentin

SweetP

The "Removal" tab is the only one that's always shown regardless of whether the display mode is "separate" or "grouped". Thus when I'm at the "Removal" tab, open preferences and change the display mode, the view should stay at that "Removal" tab. Now the view switches elsewhere ("Cookies" or "Websites" depending on the selected mode) which is a little bit annoying. I understand that something like this is inevitable for other tabs, but with "Removal" this shouldn't happen.

Ill update the behaviour to take this into account.

The problem with the setting being out of sync should only affect beta upgraders, and not be a problem for new installs.

Also, the toolbar can be customised to your liking, using any, or all of the tabs. Ive made the combined view the default for new installs, as I think it will make Cookie easier to manage for new users.

I'll think about the wording for "Display Favorites on separate Tabs" to make it more clear.
thanks for the feedback guys!

mag

The problem with the setting being out of sync should only affect beta upgraders, and not be a problem for new installs.

I'm not sure. As I mentioned - if I delete the Cookie app plist file (~/Library/Containers/com.sweetpproductions.Cookie5/Data/Library/Preferences/com.sweetpproductions.Cookie5.plist) and launch the Cookie app, the issue can be seen immediately. Doesn't this come close enough to the new install scenario? I know the app has some additional files on the filesystem, but aren't those independent on this?

SweetP

I'm not sure. As I mentioned - if I delete the Cookie app plist file (~/Library/Containers/com.sweetpproductions.Cookie5/Data/Library/Preferences/com.sweetpproductions.Cookie5.plist) and launch the Cookie app, the issue can be seen immediately. Doesn't this come close enough to the new install scenario? I know the app has some additional files on the filesystem, but aren't those independent on this?

Good catch,
Ill update the default toolbar

SweetP

Ok folks,

Thanks for all the feedback, this will hopefully be the final beta release.
Please let me know if you find any bugs!
!!Flash favorites have been rewritten in v5.0m, please double check before removing any Flash cookies!!

~~Cookie v5.0m (5.0.0.0.12)~~

Fixed an issue where Removal tab was drawn incorrectly on first run
Fixed issue with incorrect tabs showing on first run
Fixed "jumping" of tabs when toggling between combined/non-combined favs view
Fixed expansion state of favorites when changing tabs/toggling favorites
Fixed Opera Flash cookies
Fixed an issue with favorites on All tab from disabled Browsers
Fixed an issue with domain tracking cookie count only being colored if domain is favorited
Fixed an issue with removal of Safari Search History
Added a warning dialog when removing permissions from Advanced tab
Reworded preference "Display Favorites on Separate tabs" to "Manage Cookie types separately"

SweetP

Some more minor UI changes,

~~Cookie v5.0n (5.0.0.0.13)~~

Fixed an issue with Websites view not updating
Really fixed Safari Search History removal
Ui tweaks

mag

Looks good to me, perhaps the time for release is approaching Let's see what more users will do with it.

SweetP

I'm adding a couple of localizations now, and will throw this out in the wild in next week after I get my website ready.
Thanks for all the help.

cortig

I just had a chance to play with the new Brave web browser and it's been a pleasant experience. The app is supposedly designed to limit ads and tracking, but I would nonetheless love to see it also supported in Cookies 5… Any chance it'll be supported as well?

(and since we're on the topic… I'd add OmniWeb to the list The app might not have as much traction as it used to have, but it's a very nice browser with features no other app offers at this point).

Corentin

SweetP

Hey guys,
Ive just uploaded the official release,
it has performance improvements over the latest betas, so please update via the "Check for Updates" menu.

I'll update my websites over the next couple of days to release this properly. I was caught out a little by the Mac App Store.... it was reviewed in 2 days, normally it takes a week.
I need to visit the german consulate up in Brisbane today... to sort out my daughters citizenship/passport, so the official Cookie5 release needs to wait a little...

thanks for all the feedback

Weaselboy

Installed the MAS version today and everything seems to be working well. Nice update Russell.

? Offline

Just installed Cookies 5 (previous Cookie user). The initial prompts are very confusing. When I select a browser, an "allow" panel opens, yet "allow" is greyed out. So to where exactly am I supposed to point Cookies? When I navigate to the Cookies folder in ~/Library, all files are greyed. I can navigate to Safari folder in same Library. Clicking allow for Safari Library takes me to another allow panel without any sense of where I'm to navigate to. Seems this update process ought to be a lot simpler. Perhaps it's Apple's requirements, however, this install process is one of the worst I have seen in a long time.

And...several hours later I have yet to receive an email with my registration detail.

This is starting to look like a joke. :@

SweetP

The sandbox is extremely annoying...
Once you get through it all, Cookie will feel familar, and should never need to ask for access again.
There should be up to 4 access panels for each browser...
That's strange you don't get the allow button activated?

What you could do is just give Cookie access to the entire library folder?
This would give it the same permissions as Cookie4, although I'm not sure if you still need to authenticate au folders or not... So maybe it's not such a good idea.

SweetP

Just installed Cookies 5 (previous Cookie user). The initial prompts are very confusing. When I select a browser, an "allow" panel opens, yet "allow" is greyed out. So to where exactly am I supposed to point Cookies? When I navigate to the Cookies folder in ~/Library, all files are greyed. I can navigate to Safari folder in same Library. Clicking allow for Safari Library takes me to another allow panel without any sense of where I'm to navigate to. Seems this update process ought to be a lot simpler. Perhaps it's Apple's requirements, however, this install process is one of the worst I have seen in a long time.

And...several hours later I have yet to receive an email with my registration detail.

This is starting to look like a joke. :@

did the license end up in your spam folder?
if you let me know either your name or email ill resend it.

or send me an email, and ill sort it out for you.
support@sweetpproductions.com

? Offline

did the license end up in your spam folder?
if you let me know either your name or email ill resend it.

or send me an email, and ill sort it out for you.
support@sweetpproductions.com

Thank you for sending the license information.
I still find the browser setup confusing. To which file or folder do I point the app when the prompts start appearing after checking a specific browser???

I've reverted to Cookies 4. 5 seems way too buggy. Or perhaps my file setup is incorrect? Further, in 5 I cannot manually remove non-favored or tracking cookies.

SweetP

Thank you for sending the license information.

I still find the browser setup confusing. To which file or folder do I point the app when the prompts start appearing after checking a specific browser???

I've reverted to Cookies 4. 5 seems way too buggy. Or perhaps my file setup is incorrect? Further, in 5 I cannot manually remove non-favored or tracking cookies.
r

my email account stopped sending out emails the day i released Cookie5... typical. so i created some new accounts and resent all the licenses, and tried to re-reply to all emails. i spent the whole day on support with my host to get it sorted..... nothing.... im still waiting to hear back from them.

....Ive uploaded v5.0.2 to my store if you are using the trial. it has a number of fixes, including fixing the tracking cookies/non-favs from the buttons.

you can get it from here:
https://sweetpproductions.com/products/cookie5/Cookie5.dmg

when the permissions windows open, it should already be focused on the folder that Cookie needs access to. I have no idea why its not working on your setup.