There's also javascript persistent storage that doesn't count as cookies.<p>Paul from Meebo gave a great presentation on all the sneaky persistence options a few months ago: <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/idontsmoke/client-side-storage" rel="nofollow">http://www.slideshare.net/idontsmoke/client-side-storage</a><p>Interesting takeaway: more visitors have some form of persistent storage than have cookies enabled.
To my mind, this isn't a problem with just the browsers, but with Flash as well. An in-browser cookie flush shouldn't screw with plugins unless they specifically request it. Thus, I think that there really should be an API for that kind of thing.
That's pretty interesting, I didn't even know about Flash cookies. Feels kind of weird to learn about technology first hand from the NYT, but pretty cool nonetheless.
One heavy handed way around stuff like this is to use a VM (with shared storage to your laptop) for browsing and rolling back at the start of a session. Something polished and stable like VMware on Linux has never been overly annoying for me.
I didn't know about this either.<p>Here's a way to manage plugin settings on Mac:<p><a href="http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplay...</a>
Firefox 3 also doesn't clear what zoom setting you like for each site on Tools -> Clear Private Data. <a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/firefox/+bug/288236" rel="nofollow">https://bugs.launchpad.net/firefox/+bug/288236</a>