The web is shaping up more and more as an extension of our identity. Social networks, wikis, even the search engines, know a lot more about ourselves than we realize and everything is becoming more catered and more integrated. It’s no surprise then that there’s a battle brewing for our online identities and two players are standing out, Google and Facebook. There’s definitely a need for a standard and unified online identity, but should this fall into the hands of one company, any company? Mozilla doesn’t think so and wants to tackle the issue at the browser level.
Mozilla’s user experience head Aza Raskin has some thoughts on the issue and has released some mockups of a possible way to handle logins and everything that has to do with identity inside the browser. He proposes that the entire login and signup process should be done by the browser, providing a unified and consistent experience across any number of services and sites.
“Most current solutions involve lots of redirects or iframes, which leads to a confusing and phishable experience. Besides the poor user experience, we are seeing market-moving effects of the identity/log in problem. Facebook Connect and Google’s Friend Connect both let you use your pre-existing identity and social graph to super-power other websites. … (read more)