OAuth

Proposed changes to the authentication sign in screens

Alex Bilbie 3.0, OAuth, The Common Web Design , , , , ,

I’ve spent some time thinking about design of the authentication pages that we show to users when they (currently) sign in to Zendesk, Get Satisfaction, My Calendar or Linking You.

The current design uses a cut down version of the Common Web Design (CWD) v2.3. The main problem is that it doesn’t easily convert into a mobile design. Additionally, CWD v2.3 itself is full of cross browser hacks and lacks support for new browsers.

 

Current sign in page
Current sign in page

 

The proposed design uses our new 3.0 version of the CWD which has excellent browser and mobile support. With a move to OAuth 2.0 for more services, including Blogs and My Player (and hopefully Blackboard too), in the new academic year staff and students are going to be seeing this screens increasingly more and so for sign in screens for external applications I took a leaf out Facebook’s and Twitter’s books and a list of permissions that external applications are asking for.

 

External sign in page
External sign in page

 

Internal application sign in will just feature a sign in form.

 

Internal sign in page
Internal sign in page

 

Mobile sign in screen
Mobile sign in screen

 

We are planning on updating the screens over the summer period.

What do you think?

Update

Alex Bilbie Blackboard, CEMIS, CWDx, OAuth, Updates ,

This has been a big month for Total ReCal. We’ve now perfected our event importers for Blackboard assignments and academic timetables, and we’ve started working on the main web application (screenshots too). We’ve also launched a beta registration page for interested staff and students to sign up for early access. Finally, our Talis Keystone service that the University has recently purchased will be in place very soon meaning we can also start importing book return dates for staff and students.

After numerous code re-writes we’ve got a rock solid API for adding, updating and deleting events in our Nucleus data store. Our import code has also had many updates to support logging of changes to events which will be invaluable to students to keep them up to date. Once the main Total ReCal application has been developed we’re going to sit down and work out how we’re going to best make use of these logs.

When a lecturer calls in sick the central timetabling department isn’t informed (unless it will affect lecturers for a long period of time). Therefore based on our current nightly timetable imports we won’t find out about any changes. We’re going to develop a tool for faculty administration staff to make changes to events as they’re going to be more aware of what the situation is day to day. This means that we can then inform students of changes that day as soon as someone changes it.

In terms of the front end, I’ve forked our common web design, called it ‘common web design x’, made it fluid to adapt to browser size, made it completely semantic HTML5 based, and taken the concept of progressive enhancement to new levels. It will also make use of our new OAuth 2.0 based single sign on service that I’ve written and it will automatically adapt to mobile layouts.