OpenID Buttons - Friend or Foe?

The general consensus around OpenID login buttons is that they are a positive step forward. Buttons simplify the login process and are a necessary step to abstract OpenID from the login process, making it easy enough for anyone to use. We all know the context switch between a relying party and the member’s OpenID provider is confusing, and having your login be a full URL is not intuitive.

You may have already seen a Yahoo! login button on some OpenID sites and most recently Clickpass launched their own buttonized solution. Both of these address issues with OpenID, but are leaving people asking where all this is going? Are we looking at a proliferation of OpenID buttons like we have seen with RSS buttons?

Instead of a solution ala RSS Buttons, what about the use of one unbranded OpenID button that anyone can use? It seems this would be an ideal solution, though would require a consensus among the OpenID community. Stay tuned to Scott Blomquist’s blog for notes on the ‘minimum set of features that would be required for a community button to take off.’

It would be nice to get a dialog started on this as soon as possible, so thoughts / comments on how we should accomplish this are certainly welcome. Please check out the OpenID.net discuss page for venues on where a discussion could be started.

By: Kevin Fox on Mar 28, 2008 at 4:01 pm | Category: Development, OpenID, features

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6 Responses to “OpenID Buttons - Friend or Foe?”

Comments

Aaron B. Hockley

2008/03/28 at 4:31 pm | Link

Is there something wrong with the OpenID diamond logo thing? Like is showing up in OpenID URL fields?
The Restamon

2008/03/28 at 7:20 pm | Link

Interesting. I was just playing around with implementing an OpenID logon process on one of my own creations, which was working using my raw OpenID, but not my blog URL, which is supposed to function as a proxy to my raw OpenID, and when I attempted to log on to your site to post this comment, I found the same thing: I can authenticate using my raw OpenID, but I cannot authenticate when I attempt to use my blog URL as my OpenID.

Clearly, there are still some issues to be worked out here, and a universal, one-button process would be nice, if only to ensure that things worked the same wherever you traveled!
http-aaron.binprop.org-

2008/03/28 at 7:56 pm | Link

Frankly, I’m wary of OpenID login buttons. It’s yet to be seen if they damage the distributed nature of OpenID. If they do that, then they certainly weren’t worth the ease-of-use they offer.
Aswath Rao

2008/03/29 at 10:15 am | Link

These buttons “optimize” user experience in two instances. Couldn’t the simplification provided be equivalently realized by Simple Registration Extension and Attribute Exchange specifications? I feel the Seatbelt approach is preferable to customized buttons for simplifying the user experience during login times.

I am of the cynical opinion that these customized buttons are an attempt to introduce differentiation where there is none. That is why I am puzzled that some of the OpenID Foundation members are praising this development.

My interest in OpenID is as a potential RP and a user and NOT OP.
Steven Osborn » Blog Archive » One Button to Rule them all.

2008/03/31 at 5:42 pm | Link

[...] have been quite a bit of talk about the current state of OpenID login screens that are becoming cluttered with provider [...]
Scott Kveton

2008/04/01 at 12:04 pm | Link

I think we’ve come a long way in the last three years with OpenID. We definitely have technologist behind this as well as big companies, however, we’re still not at that my-Mom-has-an-OpenID stage yet.

Remember when email became ubiquitous? It wasn’t, wow, my Mom has SMTP! It was, wow, I just got an email in all-caps from my Mom. We’ve got the technology there, now its just a question of making it easier for everyone. I really think a button would be a great way to do that but the big question is how do we make sure that we don’t have too many buttons.

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