ajax provides no means for passing a username and password.

[zbskii]

XMLHttpRequest's open() can take an optional username and password as its last two parameters. JQuery provides no way to pass these in. Perhaps add username and password to the parameters $.ajax() takes?

[jgfoot]

I also think that this enhancement would be very useful. By all rights, HTTP Digest authentication should be used much more often than authentication cookies: it's much more secure (especially in a non-encrypted session). A big drawback to it is that web designers don't like the dialog boxes that browsers put up demanding user names and passwords; they want to use their own HTML based forms. But, using JavaScript, you can solve this problem. The technique is ​documented here. It requires, however, passing the authentication username and password to the XMLHttpRequest through the .open method call. jQuery simply doesn't let you do this, even with a beforeSend function.

I think the best solution is to allow "username" and "password" to be passed to .ajax. If others agree I can submit a patch for this (it would be dead simple).

[cloudream]

fixs in r4359

[davidserduke]

Fixed as cloudream said. :)