Melissa, our PR gal, recently wrote a pretty awesome post about a pretty awesome kid. You should go read it. Go.
It really gave us a lift and, immediately, several of us here in the office (today is code freeze for FF3 Beta 3 so yes, we are still in the office) agreed that we needed an about:icecream URL in the browser.
Ryan beat me to it. It’s now a Firefox 3 add-on.
As of today’s nightly firefox build, we’ve turned on EV support and activated the Verisign EV root for testing purposes. What this means is that when you go to sites that have Verisign-issued EV certificates like, say, British Airways, the site-identity button (shall we call it Larry? Yes. Let’s.) will pick up the name of the site owner, all green-like.
I rather suspect this might startle a few of you.
I’ve talked a lot about identity and security in Firefox 3, but some of the actual changes were easy to ignore if you weren’t looking for them. The site button has been around for a while, with Larry telling you what he knows about a site, but you could choose not to click on him, not to get that information. A while ago, I mentioned a way to get the EV behaviour ahead of schedule, if you wanted to test, but now those steps are no longer necessary.
So things are going to feel a little weird for a few days. There are about 4000 EV sites these days (the AOTA has a pretty long list) so you will probably hit a few, and it will probably feel weird. By all means, open bugs. The whole reason we’re doing this is to get more sunlight on the code, because it’s required weird custom builds and secret handshakes for too long.
The story goes that when London first introduced street signs, there was significant protest. They were gaudy, the argument went, and anyhow the locals already knew where they were going. Many streets in London still don’t have them. I’m excited about getting feedback into the UI to help users know better who they’re dealing with online, help them orient themselves, and rebuild some of the cues that we all take for granted in the real world. But like the London signposts, I suspect it’ll take some getting used to. Especially on Proto. Where it currently looks, as Shaver so eloquently puts it, like the South end of a North-facing horse.
10
Jan 08
Standardizing UI, and other Crazy Ideas
They are often, to be honest, a slog. Anything important enough to be standardized is important enough to attract a variety of interests and motivations, and being in the middle of multiple, divergent forces can be just as fun as it sounds. They are usually noble slogs, though. An open web needs a set of linguas franca. As it matures, people invent new creoles to express new ideas, and so our standards need to constantly evolve and add that new wealth to the growing lexicon of awesome.
A little while ago though, the W3C decided to try something sort of odd. They formed up a working group to look at standardizing security UI.
Standardizing. UI.
To anyone who has designed a user interface, that sort of feels like standardizing art. Not that we are quite so full of hubris as to imagine ourselves Caravaggios, but UI design is a complex interplay of functionality, ergonomics, and subjective experience. There are general principles, sure, but it’s a very different beast from, say, CSS2 margin properties, where everyone can at least agree that there ought to be a single correct result, even if they disagree about what that result should be or how to obtain it.
Nevertheless, boldly forth they have gone and established the Web Security Context working group with a pretty broad charter. Capturing current best practice is certainly fair game, but it is equally permissible for the group to try to move the state of the art forward. We’re active members, as are Opera and Konqueror (though not Apple or MS), but like most standards bodies, the group includes folks from academia, from other companies, and from various interested groups as well.
This workgroup has put out its First Public Working Draft (FPWD), which means I have two things to ask you, or maybe ask of you. In marketing, I believe they call this the Call to Action, so if you were looking for it, here it is!
The first thing I would ask, if you are at all interested, is that you to read it and remark upon it. The group needs public comment, and you fabulous people are ably placed to provide it.
This first draft was kept deliberately inclusive, to make sure that the majority of recommendation proposals got public airings. So if your main criticism is just “too much,” that is unsurprising, but still welcome, feedback.
The second thing is harder.
We participate in this group for all the reasons mentioned above, and I personally take that participation seriously. Even on the sketchy topic of standardized UI, I think there’s potential. A document which all browsers conform to as a baseline guide, which says things like “Don’t let javascript arbitrarily resize windows, because it lets this spoofing attack happen,” is a valuable one. At Mozilla, we talk about things like making the mobile web a better place, for example. One thing we can do right up front in that world is spare this new generation of browser implementors (and their users!) from rediscovering our mistakes the hard way. This standard could help do that.
But this draft is also defining new UIs, new interactions, new metaphors for online browsing. The academics in the group have offered to gather usability data on several proposed recommendations, but at a fundamental level, I have asked the group a couple times whether it’s right to use a standard to do this kind of work at all. I think several of the proposed requirements sound like interesting, probably fruitful UI experiments. But that’s not the same as “Standards-compliant user agents MUST …”
My second question is this: as members of the Mozilla community, is this an effort that you want me (or people like me) participating in, and helping drive to final publication?
I’m still engaged on the calls and the mailing list – I still see good things coming out of the group, and I have my own opinions about how to best contribute. But as an employee of Mozilla, I feel an obligation to steward my own resources responsibly, and to expend them on things that the community finds valuable, so it’s important for me to hear how people feel about the value of this work.
Opinions? Suggestions? Funny anecdotes?