philikon

I'm curious how you would come to that conclusion.

The problem is, OpenID will still require you to remember your OpenID provider's URL. (You could also be with one of the half a dozen or so big identity providers, and then every site gets to implement the "Nascar sticker" style icon banners. Like, uh, I don't know, news.ycombinator.com for instance ;)).

On top of the OpenID URL, a lot of sites also want a way of contacting the user via email. So that's another bit of info that you're going to have to enter when you sign up for the first time. What's interesting is that your email address almost certainly identifies you already anyway.

So why not just use email addresses instead of the URL, and API calls instead of those hideous redirects to establish identity? It's not too hard to see how you would end up with "verified email" as a core identity concept, and that any of the mechanics described by OpenID aren't really useful.

Yes, I already spoke to the team and they're going to put up a FAQ. Thanks!

A lot of questions here revolve around how this is different from OpenID and single sign-on solutions like Google Accounts or Facebook Connect. Here's a rough list (may be incomplete or inaccurate by now; while I work for Mozilla, I'm not involved in this project):

* federated (like OpenID)

* open standard (like OpenID)

* no passwords / no typing / no memorizing (e.g. like FB Connect)

* possibility of browsers providing an integrated experience (technically possible with previous solutions, but no browser has done this so far -- in the case of OpenID for a very good reason IMHO)

* anonymity/choice of identities (like OpenID, definitely unlike e.g. FB Connect)

* no exposure to identity provider (this is unlike any existing solutions; if you log into a site, your OpenID provide, Facebook, Google, etc. will know which site it was; not with BrowserID!)

Check out Dan and Ben giving a nice demo of the BrowserID user experience: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x45Nt1fOMM. No passwords, no typing, and anonymity where desired.

If you're interested in the nitty gritty details, Lloyd explains the cryptographic assertions that actually let sites verify your identity: http://lloyd.io/how-browserid-works

(EDIT: format bullet points)

Is it just me or does it not work at all in Firefox? My keyboard inputs don't have any effect.

Because when Microsoft was the only browser vendor, the web evolved really quickly... OWAIT

Much like with other features we've added recently (Sync, Panorama, etc.), these features won't impact you at all if you don't use them.

Yup, we do (I work for Mozilla). We're glad that have this strong competition, it makes for a better market and better products for the users to choose from.

Note that Firefox nightlies are already ~10% faster than Firefox 4. Performance continues to be an important part of our development efforts.

http://zodb.ws is one of the more impressive April Fools hacks I've seen this year. It runs the ZODB, a pure Python NoSQL database that's been around for a while and originated in the Zope project, on top of CPython -- in the browser! Uses emscripten which compiles LLVM bytecode to JS. Complete with a localStorage backend for ZODB.

For a fast and simple vertical tabs implementation, see https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs/

The idea of Sync is that it Just Works(tm) in the background. Creating lots of UI noise as you browse the web (history, tabs, etc. are all synced!) doesn't seem very helpful nor useful.

If anything it's the other way around. Mozilla works out in the open and the designs of the new UI had been released long before Opera released its software, as Alex Limi points out: http://limi.net/articles/firefox-4/. That said, what's wrong with taking the good ideas from other products? It's a net win for the users and the web.

I first was excited by title "Don't waste your time by cd-ing in the terminal", but then it just turned out to be a blog post about making cd'ing quicker. If you want to boost your productivity, my advice is to stop cd'ing altogether.

I see a lot of people -- particularly vi users -- cd'ing back and forth through a large directory tree. I usually tell them to get a terminal emulator that lets you easily manage many terminals open. Open one per directory you want to operate in, for instance. Learn how to switch back and forth between the different shells.

But most importantly, don't quit the program to switch back and forth between directories and files. Learn to use your editor of choice properly: how to view directory listings, how to switch back and forth, etc. Vim can do this just fine btw. The choice of tool here doesn't matter so much. Just pick one and learn it. This applies to your choice of terminal emulator, shell, editor, etc.

Mozilla

Mozilla will also be expanding its Services efforts in 2011. Firefox Sync will be integrated into Firefox 4 and ship to millions of users. Help us make it scale on desktop, mobile and the server. Help us design new and exciting services at the same scale for the next generation browsers.