[OpenID] GRDDL and OpenID

Martin Atkins mart at degeneration.co.uk
Sat Feb 3 00:32:23 UTC 2007


Bob Wyman wrote:
>  Other than the one-time
> lookup needed when you're actually writing some OpenID code, the only 
> other time you're likely to even see the strings is when you're doing 
> some debugging.

I'm forced to wonder about whether so many people not directly 
participating in the OpenID specification effort would be out there 
evangelizing the "just add two lines of HTML to your blog and you own 
your identity forever!" concept if those two lines of HTML weren't so 
easy to remember.

I believe, based on various blog entries and presentations that I've 
seen, that for many people the simplicity of those two lines of HTML is 
what has driven so many early adopters to start using and promoting 
OpenID. I'm wary of anything that makes them any less simple. I was wary 
enough about the need to now specify
rel="openid.server openid2.provider" rather than the single rel value as 
before.

 > Thus, I would suggest that the problem of memorability is really
 > relatively minor compared to just about any other benefit that might
 > be suggested.

What are the benefits of using a URI for a rel over a suitably-prefixed, 
well-documented, memorable string?

 > In any case, if the URI is something like
 > "http://specs.openid.net/auth/2.0/provider", the bulk of that URI is
 > actually a fairly easy to remember invariant prefix.

I should point out that despite the fact that I've been following the 
mailing list and reviewing the spec I still had to look up the service 
endpoint type used for OpenID by referring to the draft spec when I was 
writing my earlier message.





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