News

Upcoming SeamlessAccess release on 27 Feb We will be releasing a new version of SeamlessAccess to production on Thursday, Feb 27. This new version (link to GitHub) includes IdP filtering capabilities and support for the Storage Access API technology. Both of these changes have been tested over the last couple of months with several SeamlessAccess integrators, and we are excited to now bring these into the production environment. Please note that this is a backward compatible change, also supporting the current SeamlessAccess implementation.

Please test: SeamlessAccess with Storage Access API (and an update from Google) Migration to Storage Access API As discussed in a string of blog posts last year, SeamlessAccess will be migrating to a new technology. This migration is needed in order to adapt to changes in how browser engines operate, in particular the deprecation of third-party cookies. If you are not familiar with this topic, we encourage you to read through the posts linked just above.

Coming up: Storage Access API and IdP filtering, ready for testing As discussed in previous blog posts, see for example this post from 16 October, we are developing a version of SeamlessAccess that uses a new technology called Storage Access API. With this new technology, which is supported by different browsers, SeamlessAccess will continue to be able to remember and present the user’s choice of institute in the SeamlessAccess button. For the user this means that once they have located their home institute provider on one website, they can re-use that choice on the next website they visit and enjoy a much easier access experience.

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.