HTML5 Web Storage vs Cookies

Question

I want to display a message to first time visitors of a specific page on my site. The message will only need to appear once.

This would be pretty simple to do using cookies but is there more benefit to using HTML5 localStorage? If so how would it be implemented?

Does this answer your question? [Local Storage vs Cookies](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3220660/local-storage-vs-cookies) — Michael Freidgeim, Jul 23 '22 at 10:19

score 7 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:44

7

For what you describe, it would almost be easier and less error prone to just use a cookie. Not all browsers will have the same implementation of HTML localStorage, especially IE 7+8. However, they all use cookies and there will be no issues with cross-browser compatibility.

Check out this SO for more info: Local Storage, Session storage, Web storage, web database and cookies in HTML5

edited May 23 '17 at 11:44

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answered May 09 '12 at 22:18

Tim Withers

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score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 24 '13 at 14:04

HTML5 localStorage would be a lot more easier to implement it does not requires so many lines and it pretty straight forward how to implement. Here is an example: http://www.w3schools.com/html5/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml5_webstorage_local_clickcount
The other option that was described here is cookie. Cookie is a widely used solution but it requires more lines to write a cookie, but as it was mentioned above the advantage is the fact that cookie is used through out many old browsers. Here is an example of cookie: http://www.w3schools.com/js/tryit.asp?filename=tryjs_cookie_username

Looking at the future considering the fact that OP are changing dramatically as well as browsers and it now becomes a requirement that more and more browsers have to support HTML5 I would consider localStorage

I'm actually using it in a mobile environment so that was one reason that I was considering localstorage. Thanks! — HjalmarCarlson, May 09 '12 at 22:33

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered May 09 '12 at 22:25

Off the cuff, I would probably recommended cookies, but it depends on what browser your users are using and how you want to render your message.

Cookies are better for a wider audience, because all browsers support them. Older browsers like IE 6 and 7 don't support local storage. Cookies can be manipulated server side too. So if the message you want to display is rendered server side then cookies might be a better option.

Local storage is a little bit easier to access via JavaScript, but there are not many advantages to using it.

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered May 09 '12 at 22:38

localstorage will save data on user computer up to 5 MB, the only bad thing is that the storage is there forever and if you need to expire you will need to do it, cookies handle this automatically.

example of using localstorage:

var visits = parseInt(localStorage["numVisits"]);

var el = document.getElementById("cookieData");

if (isNaN(visits)) {
    visits = 1;
    el.innerHTML = "Welcome to the site!";
} else {
    visits += 1;
    el.innerHTML = "Welcome back! You've been here " + visits + " times.";
}

localStorage["numVisits"] = visits;

HTML5 Web Storage vs Cookies

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