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OpenID Is Why I Hate The Internet

teddziuba.com

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Re: OpenID Is Why I Hate The Internet

#61

Post by MicahWedemeyer »

shadytrees wrote: post #40

You can pry OpenID from my dead body. It moves user account controls back to the user. Want to delete an account? Delete access to the website rather than, usually, having to email the administrator. Want to only log in once to see what the website looks like? Click "Allow Once" instead of "Allow Forever."

I never thought about the delete access aspect. That's a good point.

Plus, since you never give a password, you don't have to worry about how they're storing it. Plain text in the database? passwords.txt file in the webroot? Doesn't matter because they don't have it.

Re: OpenID Is Why I Hate The Internet

#62

Post by thwarted »

maxklein wrote: post #32

I agree completely. OpenID is utterly flawed. If ever OpenID in its current form gains acceptance, I will eat my hat. And put the video of me eating it on YouTube. OpenID is just a weak idea that needs a LOT and LOT of pushing to make it accepted. Look at the iPhone - nobody pushes you to use it, you see it, like it and use it. With OpenID people have to be forced to use it, because it's cumbersome and does not offer…

"stick your USB stick into a machine, type a 4 letter pin and everything on that machine is authenticated till you take it out."

This is doable now with client side certificates. No body supports getting user creds from client site certs though. Would they be easier to understand than OpenID? Would they be easier to understand than username and passwords?

Re: OpenID Is Why I Hate The Internet

#63

Post by MicahWedemeyer »

MicahWedemeyer wrote: post #59

My site uses OpenID, and I'm surprised at how many users actually do understand it. It's especially true in the case of Yahoo users. All they have to do is type in "yahoo.com" and they're in. Try and explain to me how it's easier to remember a bunch of usernames and passwords than "yahoo.com" And remember: There are no overarching guidelines on usernames and passwords, so the whole "use the same one every time" almos…

Note: We use OpenID as an optional alternative to a regular username/password. To force users to use OpenID is pretty ridiculous.

Re: OpenID Is Why I Hate The Internet

#64

Post by MicahWedemeyer »

sutro wrote: post #11

OpenID and enterprise Single Sign-On counterparts like SiteMinder are trying to solve a problem that browser-based credential vaults have rendered largely obsolete.

You only ever use one machine to log into websites? Never had to borrow a friend's laptop?

Re: OpenID Is Why I Hate The Internet

#65

Post by MicahWedemeyer »

compay wrote: post #33

I spent most of yesterday implementing openid on a site I'm developing. The problem is not the underlying mechanism but rather the way it's been presented on most sites. Remembering an openid url is counterintuitive for most people - you have to explain too much to all but the most technical users in order for them to know what's going on. But now there has been some progress: Yahoo became an openid provider a while…

Thanks for the idselector link. I'll be installing that on my site this weekend :)

Re: OpenID Is Why I Hate The Internet

#66

Post by jrockway »

axod wrote: post #55
jrockway wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know this is too confusing? Did you ask anyone? Did you do any research? Why is this confusing but e-mail isn't? If I want to send and receive e-mail, I have to find my own provider. I also have to remember this weird string, "me@example.com". THAT'S TOO HARD FOR THE AVERAGE USER!!11!

I agree... For quite a lot of people email IS too hard for them. Sometimes takes them quite a while to understand how it works. I'd say openID is orders of magnitude more complex and more worrying. I tried using openID once. It directed me to google or yahoo or something to log in... So then I had to decide if it was really google or yahoo, or if it was some phishing site. It's a terrible idea, which is sure to fail.…

How do you know you're really at news.yc when you log in?

Re: OpenID Is Why I Hate The Internet

#67

Post by extension »

OpenID is not that hard to understand and will become even easier when more social sites become providers. The concept of your Facebook profile being your universal online identity is quite intuitive, especially to young people.

There is also a lack of best practices for consumers. When UI conventions are established and users become accustomed to them, it won't seem so confusing. Ideally, the creation of an OpenID associated "account" with a consumer would happen transparently the first time the OpenID is used, if it even needs to happen at all.

As for developers, OpenID may be more complicated to implement than conventional user/pass but it is also more uniform. Once there are mature libraries for common platforms, programmers will save a lot of time versus implementing user/pass from scratch. (I would not consider many current ones to be mature). Anyway, I'm not so sure OpenID is more complicated than a proper auth system with email verification and recovery.

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