W3C | Submissions

Submission request to W3C (W3C Team Comment)


We, W3C members Agranat Systems, Inc. ("Agranat Systems"), and Microsoft ("Microsoft"), hereby submit to the Consortium the following specification comprising the document linked below:
  1. User Agent Authentication Forms

which is referred to as "the submission". We request the submission be known as the Authentication Form submission.

Abstract

Present mechanisms for obtaining credentials (username and password) for use in HTTP authentication do not allow the web site designer sufficient control over appearance, and are not suited to internationalization and accessibility. This and the weakness of the basic authentication scheme has discouraged the use of HTTP authentication. The latest IETF drafts of the digest scheme have overcome the worst security problems with HTTP authentication; this proposal attempts to address the associated user interface concerns.

Intellectual Property Rights

Declaration of Agranat Systems, Inc.:

Agranat Systems delcares that it will assert no patent rights with respect to the subject matter of this submission. Agranat Systems expressly reserves all other rights it may have in the material and subject matter of this contribution.

Agranat Systems expressly disclaims any and all warranties regarding this contribution including any warranty that this contribution does not violate the rights of others or is fit for a particular purpose.

Declaration of Microsoft Corporation:

Microsoft agrees that, upon adoption of this contribution as a W3C Recommendation, any W3C member will be able to obtain a license from Microsoft to implement and use the technology described in this contribution for the purposes of supporting the W3C Recommendation on a royalty-free basis. One condition of this license shall be the party's agreement to not assert patent rights against Microsoft and other companies for their implementation of the W3C Recommendation. Microsoft expressly reserves all other rights it may have in the material and subject matter of this contribution.

Microsoft expressly disclaims any and all warranties regarding this contribution including any warranty that this contribution does not violate the rights of others or is fit for a particular purpose.

Names

The following are registered marks refered to in this request or the submission: (none known)

Specification

The submission may distributed within the membership of the W3C free of any fee.

The submission may be distributed publicly free of any fee under the redistribution terms expressed in the W3C copyright statement.

Suggested action

We suggest that the Consortium create an extention to HTML that provides the functionality this submission proposes. Ideally, this extention should be usable with the current HTML Recommendations, as well as in any future version of HTML. The urgency of improving Web security is such that we would prefer that a stable recommendation on this technology be created as quickly as possible, and are open to suggestions as to how this might be accomplished.

Resources

Agranat Systems will provide a document editor as needed for this work.

Change control

We are open to working with W3C and its members to produce future versions of this proposal or its derivatives.

Contact

Inquiries from the public or press about this submission should be directed to: Scott Lawrence, Agranat Systems, Inc.

Submitted

this 7th day of December, 1998,

Scott Lawrence, Agranat Systems, Inc.