Mozilla Labs posted a screencast yesterday of a new feature as part of the Weave project, which enables OpenID at the browser level, which will have potentially significant impact on adoption and use of portable identity technology.

Weave is a Mozilla Labs project, started back in December of 2007, which (before this latest announcement) was mostly known for their Sync service, which can synchonize (and keep in sync over time) bookmarks, saved passwords, browsing history, and tabs, keeping your firefox browser experience consistent across multiple computers. It’s quite useful for those of us who have a work desktop, home desktop, and laptop, or some other combination of multiple computers regularly used.

This new effort, however, integrates OpenID into the Firefox user experience:

Our sprint changes the browser to provide single-click login to sites with saved passwords as well as sites that support a federated identity (OpenID in this case). It also provides the option to automatically sign in when the page is loaded, essentially providing a single-sign-on-like experience regardless of the login method being used. In the case of OpenID, we intercept the login procedure and, taking advantage of the fact that you’re already logged into your browser, and then use Weave identity to let you into the site.

Screencast

Unfortunately, for now, you have to install the latest weave development build which also requires you to be running Firefox 3.5 beta, so it isn’t really quite ready for public consumption.

There’s also, of course, the risk that people will use this poorly – storing saved OpenID on shared machines, etc – but I think the model of allowing the browser – after you’ve logged into it – to login on your behalf – will be a really good UX improvement over time, and one I hope the other browsers will take up and implement themselves.

(I’m sure they meant weave as in the “weaving the web” reference – but I can’t but help think about hair weaves, and the artificial extension of the browser beyond its natural domain – a little irony in the name itself? Not that there’s anything wrong with wearing a weave, mind you.)

News Coverage:

• Mozilla Weave: More Servers for your browser (ajaxian)
• Hands on with Mozilla Weave: Personalize your own cloud (ars technica, with screenshots)
• Mozilla launches Desktop Integration Tool for Firefox (Mashable)
• Mozilla Weaves Web Platform for User Data (ReadWriteWeb)
• Mozilla Weave Helps Us Move to the Cloud (Web Worker Daily)
• Mozilla floats Weave as Web platform (Between the Lines at ZDNet)
• Mozilla Weaves Services (GigaOM)

And the original announcement itself: Introducing Weave (Mozilla Labs).

In that announcement, Mozilla Labs argues that:

Web browsers like Firefox can and should do more to broker rich experiences while increasing user control over their data and personal information.

The initial release, which requires a Firefox 3b2pre or later build, lets the user synchronize browser history and bookmarks with data storage in the cloud.

The more interesting pieces will come, however, as other kinds of data start to leverage the service. What if, for example, my social graph information – the list of people I’m connected to and in what fashion – traveled with me through weave to various browser installations, and could be provided by the browser to a social network application, with my permission?

I’m certainly happy to see that Mozilla’s started on the right foot, with the assumption of user control over their data, and that they are planning encryption as a core part of the service.

I guess the question is ultimately where the real hair stops and the weave begins – what is naturally a part of the browser (or what Mozilla Labs calls “browser metadata”) and what is part of the application. It feels a bit strange (browser-centric?) to think of my bookmarks as a bit of browser-metadata.

I’d prefer to say that the browser itself is a bit of metadata on the edge of my bookmarks – that the bookmarks are the key data, and the fact that I accessed them in Firefox is secondary at best.

If the concept is “store your bookmarks, history, and customizations to Firefox with Mozilla, and retrieve them anywhere you use our app” that seams perfectly reasonable but also non-revolutionary (even a bit passe).

If the concept is “store your personal identity and associated metadata in the cloud, and bring it with you to any site you choose to share it with” it sounds much more interesting and potentially revolutionary.

What if one of the things I “weave” into Mozilla’s cloud is my openID? Saved passwords? References to my social graph?

It’s only a 0.1 release, but well worth watching.

(Maybe another reason I’m thinking of identity in this context is the Sir Walter Scott quote which the name evokes:

Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!

Has someone at Mozilla Labs been reading Marmion? ).