The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is starting to tackle the sticky issue of identity on the Web. For those not familiar with the W3C name – they are the stewards of a number of the most important standards that make the Web work – the HTML, CSS, DOM, XML, RDFa, SVG and a number of other specifications and technologies. There will be an Identity in the Browser workshop in Mountain View, California on May 24th and 25th 2011. Digital Bazaar was asked to submit a position paper for the workshop, and this blog post summarizes some of the information in that paper.
In the paper we assert that while WebID is a very promising technology, waiting for broad support from the browser vendors is neither feasible or a good implementation strategy. We propose an alternative path to standardization that would use existing browser-based technologies to accomplish the goals of WebID – universal login for the Web. For those that are interested in reading more, you can download the position paper.
Manu Sporny, our Founder and CEO, has also put together a short video describing the Identity on the Web problem and some of the work Digital Bazaar has done to make browser-based WebID work without the need for native browser code.
WebID by Manu Sporny on Vimeo.