MG Siegler wrote to TechCrunch since 2009. It covers web, mobile, social, big companies, small companies, in fact all. And Apple. A lot. Prior to TechCrunch he covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, mg attended the University of Michigan. He had previously lived in Los Angeles, where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where ... ? Read More
If you are on a Web site that uses accounts, sign in button could be anywhere. Of course there are some common examples of good practice, but I can think of dozens of sites that put them all over the place. Mozilla plans to fix it, by bringing the character to the browser.
A new experimental extension that Mozilla has released Firefox does exactly that. When it is installed, you will see a new "Sign in" button on the left of the URL field. Then it POPS open a window that prompts the user for a user name and password for the site you are. Then shows you when you sign in to the site and gives you the ability to one-click Exit. Easily. Simple. Nice.
Of course you are on the site is to support this functionality. But Mozilla made it easy to do this, as they outline their position on this issue. And the best part is that it can be used with any type of log in — it may be broad, as OpenID, or specific as the blog or even Facebook, Twitter, etc. — again, if those sites with something like this.
One important note:
It is worth noting that this feature does not communicate with any server-side components and capture, store or transfer any personal information. The button is semantically the same as clicking "login" on the page: it simply tells the page you want to log in (or out) right now.
In fact Mozilla is just a common place for the sign in button to reside in the chrome browser itself. Although they also point out that it will support cookies, if the site includes the functionality as well.
Although this is open to any site/service to use, it also enhanced other Mozilla project: the BrowserID. As announced here last month, their idea for this new Web identification system is similar to something like OpenID, which never caught on (Mozilla also said it is more secure and seamless). Mozilla tries to rethink the identification on the Internet with a high level.
In addition to the BrowserID (which is an open technology anyway) Mozilla does not have any real skin in this game. But some of their competitors. For example, Google is in the process of implementation of the signed in expertise for its chrome browser. It already works with sync, but Google is working on profiles for chrome and browser-level Office also allows you to log in to Google sites, which is the key to something like Chrome OS.
In the meantime, Facebook works with RockMelt on Facebook login experience for the browser (which incidentally is also based on chromium).
And at the broader level, Google and Facebook thought about this experience is always signed in quite a bit. This is particularly important in mobile, where it can be more annoying to enter user names and passwords again and again. This, along with a focus on the central identity for the web has led to projects like Facebook Single Sign On.
Therefore, although the Mozilla may have mainly noble intentions here, I still suspect we will see more along these lines from their competitors who are not very noble. This is not to say that they must be evil, just done for selfish reasons. Google already has its own browser. I would bet that Facebook will have one sooner or later. This could help Mozilla, as they may end up as a truly open alternative.
Born from the Netscape open sourcing base for 1998 your Netscape Communicator Internet suite, Mozilla Firefox now holds approximately 22.48% of the world market for Internet browsers.
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