Following out discussion in the comment to the question, I can conclude: the question is still not quite correct. Alternative to what? :-)
Anyway, let me bring to your attention on newer approach which is very universal, because it exchanges data independent on your server side, and will work even if you don't have any server. This is
Web storage
:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_storage.
If you want to pass more data at the same key, any arbitrary data structure, you can also use
JSON
object, to serialize and deserialize data. You can find a comprehensive but short code in this section of my article:
JavaScript Calculator, 7. Dynamic Strict Mode Switching and Web Storage.
—SA