It's designed so that the browser can interact directly with the authentication protocol, saving steps for the user. This grew out of Mozilla Labs' "account man

It's designed so that the browser can interact directly with the authentication protocol, saving steps for the user. This grew out of Mozilla Labs' "account manager" project, which had a protoype UI you can see here: http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/04/account-manager-coming-to-firefox/ http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/04/account-manager-coming-to-f...