[virgilp]

Aren't cookies a web standard? I can assure you that Safari's policies w.r.t. cookies "break" a lot of website functionality, and quite intentionally so. You may not like that functionality, but the website marketers like it and have spent lots of time implementing it.

So - what's ok to break, and what isn't? In the end, it's a judgement call on the browser developer. I like what another person said here - the browser is an "user agent", as long as the actions are clearly motivated by user interest, I think they're ok even if/when they break some standards.

[kodablah]

> So - what's ok to break, and what isn't?

I'd say, for a start, achieving consensus before breaking is ideal. If the attempt to achieve consensus fails, at least I can see they tried (or I can disagree). Hopefully in the future users can use their leverage to make it not a judgement call on the browser developer, but a judgement call by the community of users. The myriad of features in browsers, however, makes it a difficult arena to enter making a large swath of users subject to these judgement calls.

> as long as the actions are clearly motivated by user interest

It doesn't matter what the road is paved with. Many things are not clear and intent is also not clear. You should not use intent to determine what you are ok with, you should use the action and effect. You may be ok with Safari's approach to third party cookies, or Chrome's approach to cookies, which is ok. But you might not be ok with the next action, and when it hurts you as a user, the reasoning will matter less than it does when you support it.

[TheCoelacanth]

They do have a consensus about these things among their users. Virtually no one wants their password manager to not work or for third-party marketers to be able to track them more easily.

The people who disagree are third-parties who want to impose their own preferences on Chrome's users. Their opinions should not be taken into account because they are not Chrome's users.

[builditand]

I am a Chrome user, I totally agree that the browser should fill the password for me and not accept third party cookies. And yet I don't want the fields in my intranet app to be filled with garbage.

[scaryclam]

We get regular complaints from users using chrome about password autofill where they didn't want it. It would be really nice if chrome would honor standards and let us worry about how to make our users lives better.

[mcv]

Give the user control. Breaking behaviour that the user might rely on, is not acting in the interest of the user. If you think it's better to block certain behaviour, at least tell the user and allow them to override your default.