26 Aug

Let’s add the same CSS class to all cookie warning popups

A proposal: let’s all just decide to use a specific CSS class on all cookie warning popups from this point onwards.

Something like .eu-cookie-warning-popup.

What are cookie warning popups?

In the EU, it is mandatory to point the fact that a website might use cookies to track the users of the website. When visiting a website, you will usually always get a hovering popup that mentions this fact. Like this:

The HTML for the popup might be something like this:

<div class="eu-cookie-warning-popup">
<p>This site uses cookies ...</p>
<button>Close popup</button>
</div>

Usually, the popups will cover the page elements or just use precious screen space. The sites often show this popup on every visit, which might be several times a day. Which gets quite annoying.

Why add a CSS class?

If all popups have a class with the same name, e.g. .eu-cookie-warning-popup, people can then use whatever tool they want (user styles, Greasemonkey etc.) to automatically stop the popups showing. This class should be added to the main popup element so that when you apply this style…

.eu-cookie-warning-popup {
display: none !important;
}

… the user will never know the page wanted to display the popup. You essentially enhance the site usability with minimal effort for any site.

Isn’t the warning there for a reason?

Anyone who knows how to hide page elements by using user styles or scripts pretty much knows what you can do with cookies (that is, nothing dangerous that you couldn’t also do without using cookies) and would close the popup without even reading the contents.