[OpenID] Combining Google & Yahoo user experience research

[Martin Atkins]

Luke Shepard wrote:
> Just wanted to chime in with a link to Niall Kennedy’s research into 
> auto-detection of likely providers:
> http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2008/02/browser-history-sniff.html#openid-example
> 
> In his scenario, the browser does some scanning in JS to determine 
> likely candidates. This is a promising solution to the problem of “which 
> providers does this user have” (although potentially creepy).
> 

That (using the colour of links to determine if they're visited) is an 
inventive solution, but you're right that it's creepy. Not only that, 
but I would consider it to be a security hole and hope that browser 
vendors would find a way to fix it in future.

(I for one wouldn't mind losing the "visited links are a different 
color" feature for the sake of this, but I'd hope browsers could just 
lie in currentStyle and report what it would have been if it were an 
unvisited link.)