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Tuesday, December 12. 2006
xmldap Firefox identity selector
Yesterday I upgraded my firefox identity selector plugin to find an interesting new addition. Of course I'm not talking about the managed card support added last month, or that the missing plugin dialog no longer appears, or even the fact that this plugin runs on both my Windows and Fedora 5 x86_64 machines. No..... instead, what caught my attention was the callout to the form button that kicks off the selector (Go figure).
Anyone who has looked at my registration or login page might have noticed that I really suck at graphics and all that I have is a tiny button labeled enter. Not very informative on its purpose, eh? After installing the latest version of the plugin (0.8.5 at the time - a lot of activity happening so this might already be outdated), I was pleasantly surprised to find my page looked a little different.
If you look at the screenshot to the left, you should notice the "What's this?" callout in green. The plugin automatically added this to callout my infocard enabled form. Currently clicking on the image is still a work in progress. It pops up a box where additional information about infocards will be provided and allows the callout to be turned off. Right now it can only be disabled for the current session. Once firefox is restarted, it will appear again. In any case I think its a great feature. There is no current standard image for indicating the login, so if you are graphically challenged like me then it at least provides people with an indication of what your button is for.
The one feature I am really waiting for is the ability to backup and restore infocards using the plugin. Chuck Mortimer recently added the code and utility for working with a Windows Cardspace backup file. Hopefully this feature will be added to the plugin so that I will be able to share my cards between Windows Cardspace (the selector when using IE 7) and firefox (on all my platforms). Currently when using Windows I prefer to use Windows Cardspace just for the fact that it is feature rich, but don't have that option when using Fedora. With the rate features are being added to the firefox plugin though, it shouldn't be too long before it's going head-to-head with Cardspace (at least feature wise).
Anyone who has looked at my registration or login page might have noticed that I really suck at graphics and all that I have is a tiny button labeled enter. Not very informative on its purpose, eh? After installing the latest version of the plugin (0.8.5 at the time - a lot of activity happening so this might already be outdated), I was pleasantly surprised to find my page looked a little different.
If you look at the screenshot to the left, you should notice the "What's this?" callout in green. The plugin automatically added this to callout my infocard enabled form. Currently clicking on the image is still a work in progress. It pops up a box where additional information about infocards will be provided and allows the callout to be turned off. Right now it can only be disabled for the current session. Once firefox is restarted, it will appear again. In any case I think its a great feature. There is no current standard image for indicating the login, so if you are graphically challenged like me then it at least provides people with an indication of what your button is for.The one feature I am really waiting for is the ability to backup and restore infocards using the plugin. Chuck Mortimer recently added the code and utility for working with a Windows Cardspace backup file. Hopefully this feature will be added to the plugin so that I will be able to share my cards between Windows Cardspace (the selector when using IE 7) and firefox (on all my platforms). Currently when using Windows I prefer to use Windows Cardspace just for the fact that it is feature rich, but don't have that option when using Fedora. With the rate features are being added to the firefox plugin though, it shouldn't be too long before it's going head-to-head with Cardspace (at least feature wise).
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Hm, I tried to play around with the InforCard-Plugin (downloading the examples) because I wanted to gather more informations on my own server. But the only I got is the message "Starting selector" in FireFox-Javascript message box. It's strange because I managed it to register myself on your blog.
Any ideas, tipps, tricks even with this very vague description?
Thx in advance,
Stefan
Any ideas, tipps, tricks even with this very vague description?
Thx in advance,
Stefan
Not sure exactly what you are trying to do. I am guessing you made a page with a form to submit the infocard and when you try to use it you are getting the javascript errors?
Take a look at my initial testing page for working with inforcards: https://www.cdatazone.org/infocard/infocard.php
What you are most interested in is the HTML from the form.
Hopefully this is what you were referring to
. In any event I would need some more details on what you are actually doing when you get the errors to explain any further.
Once you are able to successfully submit the encrypted token via the form, I can explain any of the PHP code I used on the backend to do the processing if you have questions there.
Take a look at my initial testing page for working with inforcards: https://www.cdatazone.org/infocard/infocard.php
What you are most interested in is the HTML from the form.
Hopefully this is what you were referring to
. In any event I would need some more details on what you are actually doing when you get the errors to explain any further.Once you are able to successfully submit the encrypted token via the form, I can explain any of the PHP code I used on the backend to do the processing if you have questions there.
Okay ...
I SSL-enabled my server (Apache 2.0.55, OpenSSL 0.98d, PHP 5.1.4), installed the FireFox-Plug, created an sample infocard, downloaded infocard.php, infocard-lip.php and xmlseclibs.php. So far, the card is now posted correctly to the script and - after I found out the the passphrase must be inserted into php-code - throws an "Reference validation failed" exception. Maybe theres something wrong with my "test certificates"?
Btw: Thank for the php-code and you'r book which I'm currenly reading. I'm still learning even after several years of php-programming ...
If you do not want to flood the blog with my "stupid" questions - feel free to email me.
I SSL-enabled my server (Apache 2.0.55, OpenSSL 0.98d, PHP 5.1.4), installed the FireFox-Plug, created an sample infocard, downloaded infocard.php, infocard-lip.php and xmlseclibs.php. So far, the card is now posted correctly to the script and - after I found out the the passphrase must be inserted into php-code - throws an "Reference validation failed" exception. Maybe theres something wrong with my "test certificates"?
Btw: Thank for the php-code and you'r book which I'm currenly reading. I'm still learning even after several years of php-programming ...
If you do not want to flood the blog with my "stupid" questions - feel free to email me.
I'll followup via email and just post all the steps it took once you get up and running. Will probably be helpful to others out there.
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