Introducing Mozilla Firefox Accounts • Hacker News Board

Re: Introducing Mozilla Firefox Accounts

#61

Post by Fasebook » Mon, Feb 10, 2014, 1:43 AM UTC

pekk wrote: post #51

callahad wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Persona is an awesome way to verify email address ownership, but that's only part of what Sync and the Firefox Marketplace need. For instance, Sync needs a user-memorable password for client-side encryption, and Marketplace needs the ability to force users to re-authenticate before a purchase, which is only feasible in a centralized system. Then there are COPPA concerns: We don't want to build an age gate into Person…

You do understand how it seems that this is just cannibalizing Persona and Persona will end up with none of the browser support it needs to fulfill its vision?

Sure, but isn't that the point? I mean, did that stop any of the other gatekeeper models?

Re: Introducing Mozilla Firefox Accounts

#62

Post by emn13 » Mon, Feb 10, 2014, 11:16 PM UTC

yeukhon wrote: post #23

emn13 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Options>Sync>Pair a Device and follow the directions difficult? I mean, it was definitely too many steps, and it wasn't labelled clearly enough which device was the master and which was the slave, but those are more like "users won't bother to find it" troubles, rather than it actually being difficult if you want to turn it on.

Please see the presentation. It gives you some clue why the old sync wasn't user friendly (you probably can guess already). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7200425 Basically, many assumed it was a backup program. Recovery was painful. There was multiple iterations of enhancement before they decided to roll out Fx Account, it was clear that users didn't like the original Sync. Fx Account is more than Sync. This i…

Oh yeah, I totally agree the old sync wasn't friendly - but that's something totally different. It wasn't intuitive, and it was surprising in that it really was just a sync, not a backup. Nevertheless, it was still pretty easy to enable if you actually wanted to.

Easy can still be frustrating (as in why all these steps and which machine is which, and why do I even need to look up how to do this?), and it can still be user unfriendly (as in not allowing recovery).

Re: Introducing Mozilla Firefox Accounts

#63

Post by emn13 » Mon, Feb 10, 2014, 11:23 PM UTC

arawde wrote: post #24

emn13 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Options>Sync>Pair a Device and follow the directions difficult? I mean, it was definitely too many steps, and it wasn't labelled clearly enough which device was the master and which was the slave, but those are more like "users won't bother to find it" troubles, rather than it actually being difficult if you want to turn it on.

The steps to turn on sync for devices where you don't have access to both at the same time are a bit mangled since you're required to use the recovery key. I'm hoping with this it will turn into something close to Chrome's sync

Well, minus the need to to have the decrypted/decryptable passwords in the hands of the service provider. I'm not too happy with the way chrome deals with that, it just means that the impact of any hack is going to be much larger than necessary.