[Python-Dev] Python wiki (original) (raw)

Scott Dial scott+python-dev at scottdial.com
Sun Sep 26 08:14:42 CEST 2010

On 9/25/2010 5:37 PM, Martin v. Löwis wrote:

Unfortunately, most sites using OpenID seem have an awkward login process. Maybe it's just me (I don't use OpenID much) but I expect that without a lot more handholding of new users, OpenID actually turns more people away than any other registration/login process. So how do you like the OpenID login of PyPI, which has a Google, MyOpenID and Launchpad icon, which users need to click on to create in account or login? The ultra geeks demanded and got a separate page where they can enter long URLs.

Having just tried this out. A few comments:

  1. Registering via OpenID is a bit clumsy since there is a "Register" link that does not mention OpenID.

  2. The URL registered with the OpenID provider is a bit of a wart: "http://pypi.python.org/pypi?:action=openid_return" vs. "http://bitbucket.org/"

  3. The email I received asked me to "Complete your Cheese Shop registration" which I think is just an oversight since the relabeling to pypi.

  4. It's a bit clumsy that "Login" pops up an HTTP Authentication prompt, which is useless to someone who only has never set a password and relies only on an OpenID credential. Furthermore, the 401 page does not provide a quick way to get to use OpenID.

In general, I am pretty happy with pypi's support of OpenID considering it allowed me to use my own provider, which often has not been the case with other sites. My experience with trying to adopt OpenID as a way of life has been poor mostly because many sites fail to support anything but a few major OpenID providers (e.g., Google). I appreciate has a fast-path for those providers and yet let's me still use my own. Although, I think it would be nice if I didn't have to go to another page to do that, but I may be biased by having such a short OpenID URI.

-- Scott Dial scott at scottdial.com scodial at cs.indiana.edu

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