Hi,

I promised I'd get back to you with a CA usability work report.

I have good news and bad news.

The bad news is that I haven't quite had as much time to work on it
as I had planned.  The good news is that work is ongoing and ongoing
well.

In the first instance I am improving the emails being sent out,
with clearer instructions both for RAs and users.  This will help
users who don't read documentation, because everyone reads email.

The bad news is I won't have time to finish it this week (unless
I work tomorrow but I cannot guarantee that, and even then I mightn't
finish it).  And next week I'm at EGEE.

I have had some stellar usability feedback from Stephen Burke, and
I gave it to the GOSC people and they said "good stuff", and "we know
about that one" and stuff like that.  Related to that, we haven't
forgotten Alan Flavell's extremely useful and constructive comments.

Which reminds me to remind you that the "entry point" for the CA is
http://www.grid-support.ac.uk/ca/ and not https://ca.grid-support.ac.uk/.

The requirement to load the root is essential because the CA public
server is now using HTTPS.  Which is another reason why people must go to
the non-S page first.  I have reminded the GOSC to remind people about
loading the root, from a non-S URL which sends the right MIME type
(there are many such, for historical reasons, e.g.
http://ca.grid-support.ac.uk/pub/cacert/cacert.cer)

For the command line utilities, we have a python script which is
due to be released "soon"; it can be used both for user and host
requests, and also for bulk requests.  It's waiting for someone to
review it before it becomes official, I need to find someone who
understands both python and SSL.  The applets OTOH are waiting for
someone to resurrect them properly and it is taking longer to find the
right someone.

OK, the task now, finally, can get > a sufficient threshold of my
time (except for next week), so let me promise now to give you another
report by 11 Nov.

Thanks,
			--jens