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Cookies are very small bits of information that a website places on your browser, so that you can be "identified" the next time you visit that same website. ("Your" browser is really at MSN TV headquarters, and not "inside" your MSN TV unit.) These small text files are helpful with "Quick Login" buttons, and help to "customize" a web site to your preferences. You will "get" cookies from each and every website you visit, if that website places cookies in the first place. Cookies are not necessarily bad, and most MSN TV users should not be concerned with viewing or deleting their cookies. In addition, if you delete your cookies, you might not be able to access certain websites, or features on those websites, which you previously were able to do. So, for the most part, cookies are a good and acceptable feature of internet browsing. At the time of this writing, MSN TV has disabled our ability to use utility pages to view and delete cookies. The same feature which allowed those pages to let us work with our cookies also posed certain security issues, and that's why this ability has been removed. I've been on MSN TV several years, and in all that time, I've only deleted cookies about four or five times. I've never really had any urgent reason to do so. In fact, for the most part, I was simply checking the ability of some new cookie tool I had stumbled across. There is still no way to "selectively" delete cookies. In other words,, you must either leave them alone, or delete ALL of them. I've never experienced any difficulty after deleting cookies. Some sites will require that you enter your username and password again, but that's about the extent of it. However, if you have been using a cookied website that relies wholly on cookies, you can lose a lot of stored data! Examples would be testbeds, clipboards, and some sig maker sites. Most notably for me, I've gone to Amazon.com after deleting cookies, and I have to log in as if I were a first time user. But as soon as I've logged in, the site will "remember" what purchases I've made before, and again show me some "recommended" music, based on my past purchases! Of course, Amazon.com will also "set" a brand new cookie! Deleting cookies can sometimes be a good thing, especially if you've ever been denied access to a site by getting the popup which says, "Browser must support cookies. You can only view these pages with a browser that supports cookies. It's possible that your browser supports cookies, but that they have been disabled. Please make sure that cookies are enabled on your browser and try again" That popup usually means that you have a corrupt cookie, but not always. It may just be a "full cache" problem. Powering off and then rebooting will usually solve the cache problem, as will switching users, but only deleting cookies will solve the "corrupt cookie" problem. To delete or not to delete is strictly a personal decision. I delete cookies on my computer once a week. But I do that for hard-drive space and no other reason. MSN TV has released their own version of a cookie utility, and it is available for public use. You will see two choices for dealing with cookies. One will say View cookies, and the other will say Reset cookies. Please note that clicking on Reset will delete ALL of your cookies! If you would now like to either view or delete your cookies...... For a really in-depth explanation of cookies, see the following sites: http://www.paulding.net/FAQ/cookies.html http://www.cookiecentral.com/ Cache, on the other hand, is stored information which helps your browser to "load" a recently visited website faster. This information is stored for one surfing session, and then cleared, or erased when you "power off." Cache only works when you visit a website for a second or third time during one surfing session. In other words, when you return to a page you've recently looked at, the browser can get it from the cache rather than the original server, saving you time and saving the network the burden of some additional traffic. This same "caching" function can also be a hindrance to your surfing. If you have visited a great number of web sites, or use a "graphics-intensive" site during one single internet session, your browser's memory may become "clogged" with cached information. Your surfing may become slower and slower. You may even be given the pop-up saying "This page contains too much information...." You know the routine. So, this "caching" of information can be good, or bad, depending upon how long you have been surfing, and how many sites you have visited, or cached. Cache is good when you are "freshly logged-on", and bad if you've been surfing for hours. The only way to clear your cache is to log off completely for about two minutes and then log back on. But even doing that may not completely clear your cache, due to what is known as "persistent cache." What's that? Well.... When you power OFF, you DO clear your box cache, but.... The proxy server through which you surf may 'retain' the cache from your box, and 'reload' that cache to your box the next time you go online. In other words, you cleared your cache, but the server put it back! Each server is supposed to do a 'reset' of cache when we power off, but they sometimes get a glitch and fail to clear the cache. Either the server is NOT getting a 'log-out' notice from your box, or, if it got it, then it 'glitched out'. For each server, a 'reset' is done during maintenance, just in case some things got 'clogged' up before. So, if the server failed to clear the cache, then it will do it later (sometimes hours, or days), depending on when the next scheduled maintenance occurs. One final note: You will see URLs for sites which claim to "clear your cache." Many people are duped into believing that they can speed up their surfing speed by clicking onto these "clear cache" sites occasionally. All these sites do is erase your browser's recent memory of where it has been. In other words, they render your Recent and Back keys useless. These sites do not clear your cache, regardless of what they claim. J.D. (the Vortex Keeper) has recently given me some more insight about how cache works. The rest of this article can be credited to him. Some of it may repeat what you have just read, but I felt it was worth including in this article. Thanks, J.D.! Now, here's J.D.'s explanation..... [paraphrased quote] 'Cache' is the temporary memory space in your box. Cache memory is stored on a ram chip, and is used to store information that you will use more than once during any one surfing session. The original intent was to allow faster surfing by storing pages that you have already viewed into the cache, rather than asking the server of the website to serve up that same content each and every time you access the page. Original Classic users have a very, very small cache, and Original Plus & Newer Classic users have a bit more, while Newer Plus users have the most. That is why the original Classic boxes can no longer be upgraded; there is no cache space left from which to borrow. When the cache is full and can NOT be rearranged automatically correctly, you can get slow surfing, and mixed results on pages, like the notice: "This Page Is Too Big To Be Shown Completely". When the cache gets scrambled AND is full, you get lots more errors, like; "WebTV Has Run Into Technical Problems", etc. Cache is used to store everything during a session on-line, like each current page you have on screen. It is used for quicker access to things that you will use again during any one surfing session. In other words, what you see on-screen right now, is being stored into 'cache'. Each time you go to a different website, the new page is loaded into cache, also. This is one way your cache can begin to fill up. and if there is not enough space for it, then the oldest information that is cached is discarded to make room for the newest (at least it is supposed to work that way). When it doesn't work right, you can get a glitch. 'Recents' is only a small part of your cache. Recents are only page referrals (URLs) with thumbnail images. No other information is in recents. It is just a quick way to access that small part of your cache. With so many things using up cache space, there are many ways to get a scrambled or 'corrupted' cache. When that happens, you usually get a 'page too big to be shown completely' popup, or, on occasion, a complete power-off. To keep from getting problems with your cache, it is best to turn your Instant Messenger completely off in IM 'settings', (not just have it off the screen). Also, turn off the WebTV 'background' music. Lastly, try to refrain from using 'cut, copy, and paste' excessively. Using C/C/P on lots of different things, like editing a page multiple times with different things in the buffer, can eventually cause a 'poweroff' or cause your unit to 'freeze up'. Clicking on a 'Clear Recents' button, will only clear a small portion of your cache. Switching users will clear a larger part of your cache. Powering off usually clears all of your cache, but please be aware that sometimes, what is in your cache gets stored on the server, as well as in your internet receiver. (A server is a computer that operates at WebTV headquarters, and is the machine that allows you to surf the internet.) This is what is known as "persistent cache", and can take an hour, a day, or even a few days to clear itself. P.S. One of the things I left out was that the cache is the cause of almost all of 'our' problems on WebTV. When WebTV first came out, the cache was totally reserved for each person's own use and daily chores. (WebTV did not use any of it). After 1997, WebTV could not make any additional upgrades without 'stealing' part of our cache to find the extra memory needed to provide those upgrades. Spell Check and cut, copy, and paste were the first to use some of the cache, and then when IM (Instant Messenger) came along, they used it almost all up. To get some more memory back, they finally made the printer options/driver be server-delivered, rather than in our boxes. As it is now, we have only about 10 percent of our cache left for us to use. This causes way too many problems because of the constant access, replacement of information, and the priorities of the cache. The ONLY fix is for us to get more on-board memory (a totally new box) if we want to keep all of the goodies that WebTV provides. Later, J.D. [end quote] |
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