275114 - no support for fingerprint reader functions

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Password Manager, enhancement)

Description

[JGijsen]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; nl-NL; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041202 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; nl-NL; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041202 Firefox/1.0

In Mozilla you can't make use of a fingerprint reader. With such a reader you
can secure you computer with your fingerprint, but also use it automaticlly fill
in a login page of a website. In Internet Explorer this feature works like a
charm, but sadly, no such luck in Firefox. Which is a pitty since I don't like
having to give up browsing with Firefox.

Digital Persona, the company that actually produces the hard- and software, has
extended information available for developers to build in support for their
application. (http://www.digitalpersona.com/SDK/products/resources/index.html)

It would be nice if the next Firefox draft would support fingerprint readers.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open any webpage with a login field.
2. Place your finger on the reader, a pop up menu will ask you to to enter the
username, passwd, etc. for the one time purpose of storing the information.
3. Place finger on reader again, Firefox will not enter the information and will
just ask for the one-time information again.

Actual Results:  
Firefox fails to fill in the login field.

Expected Results:  
Fill in the form and submit it.

Comment 1

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

see also bug 275974 and bug 184947.

Comment 2

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

*** Bug 275974 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

*** Bug 289224 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[Dan Fischbach]

Odd, the reader didn't work at ALL in 1.0.2, and now that I've upgraded to
1.0.3, it does the steps described above.

Comment 5

[Dan Fischbach]

On a side note, after using the fingerprint reader, and closing Firefox, the
Firefox GUI is closed, but the process is left running.

Comment 6

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

*** Bug 296333 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Jo Hermans]

confirming, based on the dupes

Comment 8

[Thomas K. (:tom)]

Related to bug 184947?

Comment 9

[Thomas K. (:tom)]

*** Bug 317461 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Thomas K. (:tom)]

(In reply to comment #1)
> see also bug 184947.

Gah, I missed this.  Sorry for the additional bugspam but you know someone would point it out if I didn't correct myself.

Comment 11

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 349998 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[Thomas K. (:tom)]

I have one of these if someone would like to write a patch and needs the hardware:
http://www.woot.com/Blog/ViewEntry.aspx?Id=879

Contact me via my bugmail e-mail.

Comment 17

[Aaron Leventhal]

I *think* that the Verisoft fingerprint reader from Biocrypt is causing Firefox 3 to crash. This would affect many HP notebooks. Bug 468727.

If there was a better way for these tools to use instead of our MSAA support that'd be great.

Comment 22

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Thomas K. :
There is no standard API for such fingerprint software. This bug is there to create a new, pseudo-standard API for external Fingerprint software and possible external password managers.

Would be great to get the other browser vendors to support such an API.
Creating such an API would mean that the software for fingerprint sensors must be updated to support it.

Supporting the digitalpersona API would be a bad idea because you that would not solve the issue for other external fingerprint software and password managers.

Comment 23

[Josh Wiegand]

Upek Fingerprint reader is not running and says that it is incompatible with the beta 4 release.

Comment 24

[Filip Štamcar]

Is there any update after 10 years? Given that Firefox already supports WebAuthn API, can some parts of it be also ported to Firefox internal functions (master password, autofill...)?

Comment 25

[Dan Mehic]

I believe password manager might be more appropriate component.