I'm considering a modification to our site, to unclutter the main page by moving the What's New and Coming Attractions stuff to a page of its own. I'm soliciting input on whether my proposed idea is good, bad, or indifferent. Your input is important.

The enhancement I propose is to use a "cookie" to keep track of your user preferences. A cookie, in case you aren't really familiar with the concept, is a small piece of data that a site tells your browser to store on your computer, and when you revisit the site that owns the cookie, the site can read the cookie. Some sites use cookies for all sorts of nasty things, but most modern browsers allow you to set up a list of those sites that are permitted to use cookies.

The first user preference that my cookie would track is whether you would like to be directed to the "What's New" page when you visit the site. I hope to be able to design this so you'd be sent to that page only if it's changed since the last time you visited it, but I can't yet guarantee that I'm smart enough to do this.

Please note that I make no promises that this change will ever happen. I'm only in the early investigative stages of the process.

If you would abandon RichardsPens if the site used cookies, I really would like to know why. NOTE THAT FPN USES COOKIES TO KEEP TRACK OF WHAT POSTS YOU'VE SEEN AND SO ON, so it can't be that you are utterly anti-cookie.

Richard,

Cookies ARE the spawn of the devil... however, there are certain instances where they can work for good. Trusted sites (yours, for example) can use them for good, and to help improve the user experience. FPN cookies make it possible for me to "View new posts" when I return to the site.

The fact that I have had the pleasure of meeting you and Barbara (which reminds me, we have something else in common: we both "married up" ) , that we have done business together and that I trust you, makes my acceptance of cookies from your site a no-brainer.

All the best,