Published on March 31, 2008
in General.
Dion Almaer writes on
Ajaxian:
If a site groks OpenID the browser should be able to pass that over without having me intervene at all. It could hide the entire login process if we came up with a microformat to let all sides know what is going on. (OpenID and OAuth in the browser?)
Singularity is going to have OpenID as the only means of logon/registration but OpenID is far from perfect; especially for state-maintaining clients like Flash, Silverlight and Ajax-based RIAs. The change of context from an application to a web site for login is a very jarring user experience.
Thinking about this, I've come to the conclusion that we're trying to solve the problem at the wrong level: this is an issue that should be handled at the browser level. And we can solve it using existing technologies like OpenID.
Imagine, for example, if the browser knew of certain OpenID providers and understood an attempt to access an OpenID provider. The browser could intercept that request and, instead of taking the user to the OpenID provider's web site, it could display a browser login dialog box (branded with the OpenID provider's logo and the OpenID logo) and relay that information back to the application.
This way, a browser that doesn't understand OpenID would just stay out of the way and the user would have the standard OpenID authentication experience of being taken to the OpenID provider's web site. A browser that does understand OpenID, however, could provide a far superior user experience by keeping the user on the same site or application and handling the login via a browser login dialog.
I wonder how difficult it would be to create this as a FireFox plugin?
You may be wondering why I'm speaking at a ColdFusion conference.
Three reasons:
Firstly, it's in Scotland -- Edinburgh to be precise -- and I'm loathe to pass up any chance to visit that lovely land.
Secondly, Scotch on the Rocks is branching out this year to embrace Flash and Flex.
And finally, they asked me very nicely during MAX Europe: "we know you're not the biggest fan of Coldfusion but we'd love to have you speak anyway!" How can you say no to that, really?
(And the reason I'm not the biggest fan of ColdFusion has nothing to do with the technology itself; it's because I personally don't see a widespread future for closed-source application servers in general when there are so many excellent open source alternatives available as to make them into commodities. That said, ColdFusion does have a lot going for it, especially in the enterprise market and for building internal systems. It was revolutionary when it was first released and I've dabbled in it myself in the past. It is very easy to learn and use. It just doesn't excite me like some other technologies do.)
As I mentioned earlier, Scotch on the Rocks is expanding this year and you can see this in the speaker line-up which includes (among others) Kai Koenig, Sean Corfield, Ben Forta from the CF side of things and Peter Elst and Neil Webb from the Flash world.
If you're into ColdFusion and live in Europe, don't miss this. Especially if you're also interested in RIAs, Flex, and the Flash Platform in general.
Tickets are currently available for £199 (early bird discount) until 29th February.
Published on December 5, 2007
in Flash.
Adobe released several new web applications this year and many more are on the way.
In a relatively short timeframe, Adobe acquired an online word processor, created a cool color tool, released a free document sharing tool and announced online versions of Photoshop and Premiere.
Now you might think that this is simply Adobe's latest attempt to grow the company by entering waters previously traversed by the likes of Google and Yahoo! But I feel that there's more to it. Specifically, there is one important advantage that having popular web applications will give Adobe: a new avenue for increasing the rate of Flash Player penetration.
I realized this today when I used Kuler and it asked me to upgrade to the latest Flash Player. Now I'm sure that Kuler doesn't use H.264 video but it still requires the latest Flash Player. And, I'm pretty sure that we're going to see Buzzword and the other Adobe applications start doing the same. If Buzzword becomes the online equivalent of Microsoft Word, you can be sure that a lot of people are going to upgrade to the latest Flash Player very quickly in order to keep working on their documents. Ditto for Photoshop and Premiere.
This is part of the reason why I predict that Adobe will keep these applications free in an effort to garner the largest user base it can. A user base that it can then transition almost immediately to the latest Flash Player the moment one is released.
Good one, Adobe!
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