[PROPOSAL] Handle "http://user at example.com" Style Identifiers

[Hallam-Baker, Phillip]

Back at the dawn of the Web I made the mistake of thinking that the address bar was the place you type a URI.

We now know that it is the place you type a search term that may be a URL in canonical form or may be a domain name or may be a search term to be thrown at a search engine. It was one of the principle innovations in Netscape over Mosaic.

Any identifier can be represented as a URI. Just stick SCHEME: in front.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: specs-bounces at openid.net 
> [mailto:specs-bounces at openid.net] On Behalf Of Recordon, David
> Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 9:46 PM
> To: specs at openid.net
> Subject: [PROPOSAL] Handle "http://user@example.com" Style Identifiers
> 
> In meeting with a large service provider this week, an issue 
> around end user usability came up.  The concern they 
> expressed was that users are know how to enter usernames or 
> email addresses to initiate the login process.  While 
> directed identity allows the user to enter "example.com", 
> they feel that it still is a bit of a stretch at this time 
> for any major deployment of OpenID.
> 
> The proposal we came up with was within the spec describing 
> what to do if someone were to enter "user at example.com" in a 
> Relying Party's OpenID login form.  The idea is that the RP 
> splits the string on the "@" and then treats "example.com" as 
> the IdP Identifier.  This thus doesn't actually require any 
> changes to the protocol itself.  Any Relying Party can do 
> this today, but they desire to see this as part of the 
> specification itself so they wouldn't be doing anything special.
> 
> Within the 
> http://www.lifewiki.net/openid/ConsolidatedDelegationProposal
> proposal, in case one, openid.identity would be set to 
> "http://openid.net/identifier_select/2.0" and then instead of 
> openid.portable being empty, in this case "user at example.com" 
> would be sent to the IdP.  While not perfectly mapping to the 
> definition of the openid.portable field, it doesn't seem like 
> that much of a hack to do this.
> 
> While I certainly am not looking to re-kindle the "Why a 
> URI?" debate, http://user@example.com is also technically a 
> valid URI.  It is used in many cases by browsers to provide a 
> username when making a web request.
> 
> So while this is a little funky, I really think the increased 
> usability offered by describing what a RP should do when a 
> string like this is entered seems to outweigh the potential 
> conceptual confusion.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> --David
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