Re: [Auth]I think I have it... (browser auth interaction: simple and clean)

[Barry Fitzgerald]

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, John wrote:

> I heartily agree. Just wanted to record a brainstorm for posterity sake.
> I also note that this was a clientside front-end proposal. I agree our
> primary work is on the clientside backend.
>

I'm at work and will respond further at length to the rest of this convo
later - but I have some short comments:

Yes, we should focus on the back-end -- we can abstract around user
interface after the fact.

But, keep in mind - plugin support does have some major concerns, some of
which you eluded to in your original message.  Is it a bad idea?  Hell no
- I think it's a great idea.  But both the plugin and a mod_dgauth should
simply exist to interface with the pre-existing auth project in it's most
potentially secure form.

But, it's still a very worthy way to access the more public class tokens
in the profile.


>
> No need to be humble. The plugin may very well be the useful piece we
> take from FlySolo. Remember Freport and MACS aren't the only two
> products to integrate? ;-)
>

FlySolo has two significant problems:

1) it is partially proprietary (by Albert's own statement of intention).

2) It seems to be pretty heavily dependant on windows - at least, it did
last time I looked at it, which was months ago.

Take what you can from it, but unless it is a completely Free Software
solution, it can't be a DotGNU project and thus you are not required to
integrate with it.



> The primary difference between this and flysolo, was the embedding
> technique of flysolo was <embed>, which can change the layout of the
> page; older IE and Netscape allocate at least 1x1 pixel for any embed
> (no such thing as a 0 pixel embed) to display, which can potentially
> change a pages format. Also in my consideration was that, IE 6.x
> supposedly doesn't support embed, but rather uses <object> instead.
> <link> solves these problems (visual consideration insufficient
> support)? Someone correct me if I'm wrong... I very well could be.
>

Yes, <embed> is being depricated in support of the <object> tag.  IIRC,
this is actually in the HTML 4.01 spec. :)

        -Barry