Your user sign-in experience is one of the most important interactions on your site, and all of the options you have fall short of what you need. You can roll your own, but you already know how much that sucks. You can use a sign-in service, but it won’t have everything you want — easy to deploy, easy to use, no lock-in, and respects user privacy and choice.
The BrowserID Solution
You will be surprised at how easy it is to implement BrowserID. Are you ready? Check out our instructions. Go on, I’ll wait right here.
Not bad, right? It’s super easy to use, too! Check out the user flow. Did I mention that it works on Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, and IE — even on iOS and Android?
You may have noticed that the flow is centered around choosing an email address to sign in with. That’s no accident. Email as a login identitier already makes sense to users and sites alike, which is no easy feat. Because email is inherently distributed, BrowserID can enable any email provider to act as an identity provider. For now, though, browserid.org verifies your email by sending you a message (a common pattern on the Web).
Of course, you want more than just an email, and in early 2012, the BrowserID team will start to add experimental features to get at least a name and an image. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The goal is to enable rich APIs to the user’s identity.
We Need You!
The BrowserID team is very eager to get your feedback. Try it out on your own sites! Instead of coding it yourself, you can trivially add support via plugins on WordPress or Drupal. You have no excuse; give it a whirl and let us know what you think on our mailing list.
We’re listening for your feedback. BrowserID is easy to implement directly, and it’s even easier to add support via plugins on WordPress or Drupal. Improve your users’ sign-in experience; try out BrowserID, keep up with our blog, and let us know what you think.
The Web needs this. Let’s make it happen.
Developer Gift
I really like my SousVide Supreme Demi. Sous vide cooking is really fun, and there’s a lot to try — highly recommended for anyone into food hacking.
I had a more DIY sous vide setup before, but I switched to the SousVide Supreme Demi recently, and I like it better. It’s an all-in-one unit that looks good on the counter, so I can leave it out permanently without it looking like I’m running a science experiment.
You haven’t had scrambled eggs until you’ve had sous vide scrambled eggs. :-)
