Programming Social Applications

Extensions Currently Under Development

In addition to the OpenID extensions that we have already explored, there are several extensions that are currently under development and contain draft proposals for additional features that providers may make available within their OpenID authentication process. We’ll cover a few of them now.

OpenID user interface work group proposal

The gist of the OpenID user interface work group proposal is to load the OpenID authentication process within a pop-up window instead of redirecting the entire browser window.

The main benefit here is the customization potential of the pop-up window itself. In the traditional OpenID model, the relaying party contacts the OpenID provider to handle the user authentication using a default authentication form and implementation; it’s usually an entire login page that mimics its membership login system.

Using this proposed model, however, a provider site can determine that the authentication procedure should load in a pop-up window, meaning that it can display an authentication form of a certain size to best fit that window. The provider may want to resize the pop-up window as well in order to fit it to the required size of the authentication form. The onus here is on each provider, not on the relaying party, to pick a correct pop-up size. If the entire browser window is being taken up by the membership form, having a resize event just does not make sense.

The next benefit to the OpenID user interface work group proposal ...