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Why we love Mozilla Persona

blog.zonino.co.uk

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Re: Why we love Mozilla Persona

#51

Post by jol »

dochtman wrote: post #36
blueskin_ wrote: post #32

Yet another OpenID/OAuth/Whatever? Another SPOF. Give me separate logins and KeePass any day.

The protocol itself doesn't come with an SPOF. Only the transitional current implementation, required for bootstrapping purposes, does require the JavaScript shim hosted by Mozilla. In the future, at least Firefox itself (on desktop, Android, and Firefox OS) will come with built-in support. And, quite importantly, running your own identity provider (which is another SPOF in many systems) is pretty straightforward and…

If Identity Provider goes down, it is a SPOF for the account, but the same is with FB/Twitter login

Re: Why we love Mozilla Persona

#52

Post by dochtman »

StavrosK wrote: post #49
dochtman wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The team has been focused on Persona support in Firefox OS, the Firefox Accounts stuff which relies on some of the same code as Persona, and integration on Firefox desktop. They have by no means stopped working on Persona, but resources on the Identity team seem kind of limited relative to how much there is still to be done.

Hmm, right. It seems that interest has died down a bit, so maybe it'd be worth spending some man-hours keeping it alive, even if it takes away from development time. The community could maybe help with development? If not with Firefox OS/Accounts, at least with the web component.

I have, but not much of the community seems interested in helping out.

To be fair, it's also pretty hard to help out while the team is focused on doing other stuff.

Re: Why we love Mozilla Persona

#53

Post by pja »

hmans wrote: post #37

Persona is _awesome_. I use it on all my sites. But it also proof that being awesome not only is not good enough to be successful, but simply doesn't matter. The user is not interested in a solution that is awesome, but one that doesn't scare him. And a big ugly third-party popup is as scary as stuff on the web gets these days. Remember Ogg Vorbis?

Vorbis ended up being very successful in some niches - audio for games springs to mind.

Persona might find its own niche, even if it never completely displaces Facebook user authentication on the web.

Re: Why we love Mozilla Persona

#54

Post by pdfcollect »

We used Persona for http://bit.ly/blibonline - and one of the problems we faced was that we would have liked the registration process to let our users tell us the name / icon (avatar), which was missing in Persona then. Any news on the timeline for these additions to Persona? (OpenID gives those two elements from registration/usage)

Re: Why we love Mozilla Persona

#55

Post by sergiotapia »

I love Persona! I created a demo MVC3 application using Persona for authentication and its fantastic from a developers perspective.

https://github.com/sergiotapia/ASP.Net-MVC3-Persona-Demo

Authentication is simple to implement and you don't worry about user password protection.

I'm surprised interest has died down for the project given how easy it is to use. Maybe Mozilla should market it more?

Re: Why we love Mozilla Persona

#56

Post by StavrosK »

dochtman wrote: post #33
crayola wrote: post #5

Persona is an elegant, powerful idea that is 100% in the users interest. I dearly want to see it gain traction. Kudos for disseminating your enthusiasm.

Here's a crazy simple way to implement Persona authentication for your Apache-deployed apps/sites: https://github.com/mozilla/mod_authnz_persona (I know Apache may not be that popular with the HN crowd anymore, but I don't currently have the time to dive into nginx and do the same for it. Nevertheless, if anyone wants to do that, I'd be happy to answer questions and provide pointers into the Apache code.)

Oh wow, that's fantastic! I would love an nginx module that did this, although wishes don't go far.

Re: Why we love Mozilla Persona

#57

Post by StavrosK »

pdfcollect wrote: post #54

We used Persona for http://bit.ly/blibonline - and one of the problems we faced was that we would have liked the registration process to let our users tell us the name / icon (avatar), which was missing in Persona then. Any news on the timeline for these additions to Persona? (OpenID gives those two elements from registration/usage)

I think the preferred way to implement this is with an interstitial after the login, and then they can be changed from the settings page, as usual.

Re: Why we love Mozilla Persona

#58

Post by rebelde »

drew wrote: post #24

In principle, Persona is great. Not storing passwords is awesome, a non-FB/Google/Twitter identity option is important. I would encourage you, though, to look carefully at your login completion metrics. I implemented Persona on my site ( http://www.sixquestions.co ) to have a pure email option and although users clearly prefer it, about 35% complete the Persona login flow successfully. That's 10 points lower than our…

Here's an example: I just failed to login to Zonino myself.

I enter in the Gmail address that I use for registrations and other junk. I get the message: "Accounts don't match. You are currently signed into Google as [my normal Gmail address]. ... Force Google logout?" Forget that. I'm not interested in logging out of Gmail. Logging out of #1, into #2, out of #2 and back into #1 is more work that simple registration. I expect that I'm not the only person with this problem. I hope a solution can be found, because it would be really helpful.

Re: Why we love Mozilla Persona

#60

Post by StavrosK »

dochtman wrote: post #52
StavrosK wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, right. It seems that interest has died down a bit, so maybe it'd be worth spending some man-hours keeping it alive, even if it takes away from development time. The community could maybe help with development? If not with Firefox OS/Accounts, at least with the web component.

I have, but not much of the community seems interested in helping out. To be fair, it's also pretty hard to help out while the team is focused on doing other stuff.

Hmm, right :/ What are some things you guys need help with? Maybe we could pitch in.
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