OpenID enabled again!

It’s been a long time since I last allowed OpenID on this site. In fact, I disabled the OpenID plugin on Christmas Eve 2007. At that time, my reasoning was that the plugin added a great deal of JavaScript and additional CSS to the page. (I had complained that the size of a web page including stylesheets and JavaScript had increased to more than 60 kilobytes.)

It doesn’t seem to be much of a concern now. According to Safari’s Network Timeline tool (under the Develop menu), the homepage is now over 600 kilobytes including stylesheets and JavaScript, and it isn’t slow, even on lesser connection speeds. I’m still trying to optimize the site, but I guess having plugins like WP-PostRatings just add to the size of the site. (I don’t really like Prototype, jquery, and that sort of JavaScript library because they are bulky and require the whole thing to be loaded. The Yahoo! UI is a much better library.) However, to be honest, the biggest file size component is the graphics (screenshots and such), because they go over 300 KB.

Let’s talk about OpenID:

Yahoo! recently embraced OpenID, and the new version of the plugin that I’ve installed now supports using your Flickr page as an OpenID. It’s a nice, simple way of logging in to thousands of sites on the Internet. I have liked this concept for a very long time, and am now re-opening up the OpenID log-in and registration and comment authentication system. I believe that users shouldn’t have to register for all the sites they browse.

Let’s talk more about the site’s size:

Only 5 users over the past month have visited this site on dial-up. Understandably, using the site will be a horrible experience for dial-up users, but 5 users are not significant enough for any concern. I will therefore not aim to optimize the site for dial-up; my goal is to make it an enjoyable experience for users on 256+ kbps connections. The size of the home page (XHTML only) is about 50 KB, and the size of the stylesheets is only 11 KB. What is weighing down this site is the inefficient ITK Ranks scripting system, which has about 10 different complex JavaScript files in an unoptimized format, and the inefficient JavaScript used for ads. OpenID and PostRatings aren’t actually that bad.

To help minimize any pains of surfing our site, I will be optimizing the ad system and showing less banners on the site, opting for PHP rather than JavaScript invocation, and also trying external ad management like Adroll. (I remember taking banners off for a few weeks sometime early in 2007. That worked extremely well.)

A final word: what is really adding to the size of our site is images. I like using graphics to illustrate what I am saying, as opposed to text-only content. Realize, however, that if it weren’t for the images (particularly the resized pictures from Flickr, which is bad at image compression), this site would be only 100 KB, compressed. That’s pretty good for a modern blog. I will try to reduce the amount of resized pictures from Flickr. (The original pictures that I create are a lot smaller than the resized versions.)

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OpenID DISABLED

I very much regret the fact that I have to do this, but the WP-OpenID plugin is too bulky and inefficient, adding unnecessary JavaScript and CSS references to pages that don’t need them, and significantly slowing down the processing time of ALL WordPress pages.

Apologies to our 25 users that logged on or registered with an OpenID.

I will re-enable WP-OpenID if and when I optimize the site to reduce unnecessary JavaScript, combine CSS, etc. Otherwise, the size of all the files exceeds 70 KB (when uncompressed), and this is simply unacceptable.

When I do add OpenID again, it will likely be accompanied by Yahoo!’s BBAuth and Microsoft’s Live ID Authentication SDK. Perhaps that will open this site to a wider audience.

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Some noteworthy podcasts

I apologize for the long gap in posts, but I was recently extremely busy.

During November of this year (2007), I realized that the iTunes Store did have some of the content I wanted. Podcasts, and iTunes U, have since then provided a great deal of useful audio, anywhere from (explicit) discussions between Star Trek fans in England, to lectures on search engine technology at some university.

One of the best podcasts to listen to is the weekly “Security Now” involving Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte. It does tend to be a bit tedious, but they do discuss important security issues and other things that may affect one’s privacy. They’ve talked about the PayPal security key — which, by the way, isn’t yet available in Canada. They’ve also discussed the OpenID system and various implementations. Interestingly, they are quite fascinated by VeriSign, with talks about VeriSign’s Personal Identity Provider (another OpenID provider), VeriSign’s credit-card form-factor security code generator, and VeriSign’s system that allows PayPal to maintain its new security key system.

If you’re interested in security and privacy issues, or if you’re just a geek looking for something to listen to, this is an excellent choice.

Another podcast of note, but which I must talk very negatively of, is John C. Dvorak’s Tech5. Now, this daily update of about 5 minutes is a good look at everyday technological news matters, but I do find that Dvorak’s frequent rants and angry attitude are very damaging. There is little unbiased news in here; virtually everything discussed is something of which he is “suspicious” or critical. He’s attacked some people on MacWorld, shot down the reality of Microsoft’s new offices in Siberia, and totally opposed the ever more popular Amazon Kindle (an e-book reader device).

If you’re one of those people like me that are able to sort fact from fiction, truth from opinion, take a listen to Tech5.

I have other favourites as well, but I doubt they are “tech” enough to be mentioned here. Maybe in the Star Trek section, but “Make It So” isn’t exactly suitable for reasons of profanity.

Tech5 and Security Now! are the noteworthy podcasts of December 8, 2007.

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OpenID enabled

I’m starting to experiment with single sign-on services, including Yahoo!’s Browser-Based Authentication, Microsoft’s Windows Live ID Authentication SDK, OpenID, and perhaps a single sign-on server for FreddyWare. Geekie.org is basically my place to experiment with integrating each of these things.

OpenID is now enabled on Geekie.org; if you have an account, you can go to a part of your profile settings called Your Identity URLs. On this page, you can associate your Geekie.org account with an OpenID.

Why am I putting OpenID on Geekie.org? It’s certainly not because many other sites are using it. It’s because OpenID allows me (and admittedly, many other blogs) to delegate the authentication part of logging in to a more accomplished provider. The current preferred OpenID provider for a user, on Geekie.org at the very least, is VeriSign Lab’s Personal Identity Provider. For little reason other than that I trust a well-known security company like VeriSign over a less reputable startup like SignOn.com, PIP is what I use.

In the near future, you may start seeing Windows Live ID sign in links on FreddyWare sites. As much as I dislike Microsoft’s business practices, I do have to admit that letting users log in with their Windows Live ID opens up a whole wider market. Similarly, allowing users to utilize Yahoo!’s long-existing service for managing their log-ins is beneficial.

Single sign-on is about a lot more than just the convenience of managing one set of credentials. It’s also about how secure logging in is. Even having an SSL connection to our FreddyWare.org server won’t help someone make a decision about registering with their personal information (names, e-mails) if they feel that we aren’t a trustworthy site. Meanwhile, I believe a lot more people would be open to registering for a Windows Live ID (if they don’t have one already!) or a Yahoo! account. (Personally, I would prefer Google Accounts significantly, but they’ve chosen not to allow just any site to integrate with it; surely there is a good security concern about that.)

I’m also working on setting up a centralized FreddyWare authentication server for these purposes. LDAP is out of the question, although it’s easiest to integrate with LDAP. OpenID or SAML seem to be the top candidates at the moment.

If you haven’t gotten one yet, get a PIP OpenID, and associate it with your Geekie.org account!

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