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Does Webkit have a bug or are Mac programmers missing a step?

Webkit LogoApple’s Webkit is being built into all sort of Mac applications, however they all seem to share data and I don’t feel they should.

As an example, if you log into your Google account in Safari, Shiira is also logged in. And it doesn’t stop there. GCal, CSSEdit and Journler all use webkit too so you are automatically logged into your Google account.

This isn’t just a Google thing either. Works with Yahoo mail, WordPress blogs and any site that has a checkbox for “remember me.”

In my mind Apple’s Webkit should be more like Mozilla’s Gecko where each application stands alone. Just because you are logged into an account in Firefox, doesn’t mean you area also logged in in Camino or Flock.

I’m sure there is a programming reason, but I don’t know if it’s something Webkit has to fix or if it’s a feature programmers need to be adding in. Either way, I feel as each application should stand on it’s own unless I opt into integration. It just bugs me that I can’t use GCal, Safari and Shirra with separate accounts at the same time.


1 Response

  1. Mark Rowe says:

    This is nothing specific to WebKit, rather it is a feature of Foundation’s cookie management. Foundation contains the network layer that manages the HTTP transactions used by WebKit, and other clients such as NSURLConnection. The documentation at link mentions that “These cookies are shared among all applications and are kept in sync cross-process”. If you feel the behaviour is not ideal, I would encourage you to file an enhancement request about NSHTTPCookieStorage at http://bugreport.apple.com/

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