For the past year, we’ve been rapidly improving Mozilla Persona (previously BrowserID). Our goal is simple: we want to eliminate passwords on the Web. Today, after many iterations based on community implementation feedback, Persona enters Beta. This first beta means:

1. we’ve produced and are committing to a much improved API
2. the first-user experience is significantly improved and streamlined: it’s actually hard to get lost
3. critical new features, including support for showing your site’s name and logo, as well as terms of service and privacy policy, are live

Since the beginning, Mozilla Persona was designed to work across browsers. Our commitment to this continues: Persona Beta 1 supports all major mobile, tablet, and desktop browsers. In fact, we’re working to build an extensive library of automated regression tests across all browser platforms to ensure that this support remains rock solid as we continue to add features.

Persona is not just a great product, it’s also designed with the Mozilla Values in mind. When you deploy Persona on your web site (in an afternoon or, sometimes, only 15 minutes), you’re showing respect for your users and their data. You’re only asking for the data needed to log them in, and users know they’re only sharing exactly what’s shown on the screen.

The technology behind Persona is interesting in its own right. We’ve built and scaled Mozilla’s first serious node.js-based service. We’ll be writing a few more posts on the specifics of our technology in the weeks and months to come. In the meantime, check out our source code, and join us on email or irc.

And if you’re building or upgrading a web site, don’t forget to add Persona login support! Our quick setup guide should help you get off the ground in minutes.