[OpenID] Flex OpenID Component

[SitG Admin]

>Thought you couldn't do OpenID in Flash? Apparently you can... sort of. ;)

I was just reading about a similar 'enhancement':
http://openid-demo.appspot.com/
And they are enhancements - but only when used to *enhance*. OpenID 
still has the advantage of maintaining compatibility with *old* 
browsers, or users who insist on disabling scripting (for 
security/privacy reasons), because it uses Redirect functionality 
that has been around for a long time; if RP's implement OpenID 
support that *requires* additional functionality, they may lose out 
on (or at least annoy) users. Which is fine, if they want to (*I'm* 
fine with insisting on cookies to help me distinguish between users 
so I can manage them in regards to their ACL), but let's not be so 
carried away with fancy ways of presenting OpenID that we forget to 
teach people the basics: it only takes a bit of code on the 
web-admin's part to make sure a fallback mode is available for users 
who can't handle the fancy stuff, so unless the site has good reason 
*not* to, it should support users in whatever level of functionality 
*they* can utilize. The technology and the user, together, should 
define the minimum threshold for useability - OpenID should not 
become an argument that everyone, in this day and age, MUST support 
scripting/Flash if they want to do anything.

I'm wary of Flash for another reason, related to privacy; I've 
noticed that Flash games reload in Firefox (I regularly flush every 
aspect of my cache, etcetera, to reset Firefox), but then they 
*remember my progress* - as if Firefox is preserving some *settings* 
for that Flash application, and these aren't affected by any reset I 
know how to do. This sounds like interactive Flash, and *that* (the 
idea that it could communicate back to a server information like 
whether the user had newly entered their URI or had it stored from 
previous activity) seems very risky to me.

-Shade