Is there a need for openid.user_setup_url?

[Martin Atkins]

Paul Crowley wrote:
> If I do a checkid_immediate, and it comes back declined, surely I can
> use checkid_setup to do the job of going to user_setup_url?
> 
> It's more than likely that my lack of web UI skills are letting me down
> here, and that there's a neat UI thing you can do with the latter that
> you can't do with the former, but I can't work out what it is.  It seems
> like it should be possible to pop up a window, do the checkid_setup in
> the popup, and have the return_to URL arrange to close the window and do
> the javascript goodness in the parent window, but as I say my expertise
> is lacking.


In the success case a window would open and then close again, which will
look a little odd and may confuse users.

With that said, I never did really like the procedure for "AJAX" before.
It always seemed a little clunky:
* Try to log in
* Click on setup link
* Try to log in again

In the redirecting mode this all happens in one, natural progression
with no extra involvement from me. I suspect that, when a user_setup_url
is recieved by the AJAX stuff, the consumer could immediately open the
setup URL in a new window. I'm not sure, however, if it would be
possible to have it automatically close and login on completion, as I've
long-since forgotten the exact details of how the AJAX login works.

If I'm thinking of it right, then you'd open the user_setup_url in a new
window but with a return_to URL rather than asking it to close. The
return to URL would, as you mentioned originally, return some script
which would do some stuff to window.opener and then close itself. The
procedure would now be:
* Try to log in
* Setup page appears in new window
* Login automatically completes once setup is approved

This is closer to how the redirect mode works, but with an extra window
involved to avoid "losing" the original page and any form elements that
were present on it.