This is an issue that concerns me as well, so thank you, Paul, for bringing it up on this list. I do not consider if FUD. This is something that at least a few of us would like to discuss. If it doesn't pertain to you, then fine.
My example would be TweetGrid. Right now, it is entirely a "drive-by" site, meaning that anyone can use it w/o having to sign-in to the site itself and there is no need to create an account or have any notion of a session. People can search at will. If they want to actually interact with twitter, then (for now, until the official oauth switch) they enter their username and password for whatever account they'd like to use for the interaction and all is well. This is especially nice for people with multiple accounts since there is no "session" on tweetgrid, each twitter interaction is handled as a separate event/action, so you can change your "active account" at any time trivially by just retyping your user/pass in the appropriate boxes. With OAuth I see this changing quite a bit. Each twitter account that wants to interact with twitter through TweetGrid would need to make the loop through twitter. So, if someone wants to use 4 or 5 accounts at once they'd make 4 or 5 authentication trips to twitter and back. Imagine having to do that every time you come to use TweetGrid. I imagine this being a UX nightmare unless I implement some sort of user logon/session system which stores oauth keys for authenticated accounts, etc. Then it is no longer a fully drive-by service, and now I have to bring a login system/database into the equation. Please Note: This is not me complaining... this is me thinking outloud for the benefit of myself and Paul, who originally posed the question. Responses telling me to "man up and just deal with it" will be promptly forwarded to /dev/null. I have been thinking for a while about how to solve this UX situation and how to create something that won't alienate users by making them create Yet Another Website Account (tm) and jumping through some hoops to get there. Anyway, those are my current thoughts. I, too, would be interested to hear how sites/applications that currently don't use a login system are planning on dealing with the oauth change. -Chad On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 1:34 PM, Dossy Shiobara <do...@panoptic.com> wrote: > > On 3/1/09 1:28 PM, Petermdenton wrote: >> >> Dossy, serioulsy, no one is saying the sky is falling. This list is for >> application developers to discuss development topics as they please. You >> may know everything, but for those of us who wish to discuss > > We need to resist spreading FUD. Twitter has its problems, but creating > ones where there aren't any helps no one. > > -- > Dossy Shiobara | do...@panoptic.com | http://dossy.org/ > Panoptic Computer Network | http://panoptic.com/ > "He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own > folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70) >
