News

A new chapter in the ‘browser changes’ journey: Preparing for the switch to Storage Access API Over the last couple of years, we have posted regularly about changes that are being made to the way that browsers work and how those changes will affect SeamlessAccess (see e.g. this post from Feb 2024 or this post from Nov 2023 and references therein). These changes primarily impact SeamlessAccess’ ability to remember the user’s choice of home institute across participating websites, a functionality that we refer to as “global persistence”.

Signed up for Google’s storage partitioning trial? Time to renew! As we talked about in a post back in February “Calling all SeamlessAccess integrators to participate in deprecation trial for unpartitioned third-party storage” - and before that as part of a longer explanation back in 2023 - the team that works on Google Chrome has made available a limited-time trial that allows participating sites to continue to use unpartitioned storage in the browser.

Google’s updated approach to third-party cookies: What does it mean for SeamlessAccess? In a blog post that came out in April, we spoke about changes to browser technology and what impact those are likely to have on access experiences and SeamlessAccess. At the time, following Google’s communication on the subject, we worked under the understanding that Google would roll out deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome to 100% by the end of this year.

Important update for all SeamlessAccess integrators regarding the impact of browser changes. Today’s post updates the evolving story about changes to browser engines and how those changes affect SeamlessAccess. Perhaps the most visible change in this context is the deprecation of third-party cookies by Google Chrome, which has already been rolled out to 1% of users and that will be ramped up “to reach 100% of Chrome clients by the end of Q4, subject to addressing any remaining concerns of the CMA.

Calling all SeamlessAccess integrators to participate in deprecation trial for unpartitioned third-party storage In a blog post published towards the end of last year, we spoke about an update to Google’s Chrome browser that by default enabled a new feature called Storage Partitioning. This feature effectively blocks third-party websites from accessing information held in the local browser storage, which is used by SeamlessAccess to show the user’s remembered choice of institute in its button.

Third-party cookie deprecation and its effect on SeamlessAccess Is your SeamlessAccess button acting weird? Not showing your remembered institute as you expect? This might be due to a new browser configuration setting that blocks third-party cookies. Without those cookies, the SeamlessAccess button (i.e. “Access through..”) will work differently than you might expect - but the other SeamlessAccess services (login, discovery, remembered choice on the discovery page) continue to work as before.

FedCM: July update on the efforts between the R&E community, the web community, and browser vendors This is an update following continuous meet-ups and other gatherings between representatives of the Research & Education (R&E) community and the browser vendors – discussing what capabilities in and around FedCM are required for our community to continue to serve academic users and their use cases. Background In a blog post titled “An emerging new technology for federated access: Federated Credential Management (FedCM)” and several later blog posts (most recent, previous), videos (one, two) and FAQs (for librarians and publishers), we discussed ongoing developments at the major browser vendors that are bound to have a significant impact on how users will experience the web in general, and on federated access in particular.

FedCM: An update on the efforts between the R&E community and browser vendors This is an update following a recent meet-up between representatives of the Research & Education (R&E) community and Mozilla and Google – discussing what capabilities in and around FedCM are required for our community to continue to serve academic users and their use cases. Note: SeamlessAccess is organizing a more in-depth webinar on this topic on April 6 - register here!

An emerging new technology for federated access: Federated Credential Management (FedCM) In earlier blog posts, videos (one, two) and FAQs (for librarians and publishers), we talked about ongoing developments at the major browser vendors that are bound to have a significant impact on how users will experience the web in general, and on federated access in particular. To recap, these changes are driven by concerns around user privacy - including regulations such as GDPR - and meant to stop the unsanctioned tracking of users across the web.

Contract Language Model License Agreement 1.0 The Contract Language Working Group is pleased to release the Federated Authentication Contract Language Model License Agreement 1.0. From the introduction: “Existing contract language between resource providers and libraries is almost universally focused on authentication and authorization via IP address. Reference to federated access is most often with language that refers to “secure networks”, and the authorization of users that are on said network to access resources.