1186514 - Take localization into consideration with Show/Hide string

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Chenxia Liu [:liuche]]

I was talking to rfeeley and tecgirl, and I learned that some languages can have very disparate string lengths for "Show" and "Hide". We should consider whether we should do something about our use of this (about:logins edit screen), whether it's using Show/Show, or iconography, or what.

Comment 1

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

Yeah, Ryan mentioned this. I think we should try to keep consistent with the work that's been happening on that side once a final decision has been made.

Comment 2

[:Margaret Leibovic]

I feel like we should just use a different enabled state for the show button, similarly to what we do for the FxA login screen.

Comment 3

[Allison Naaktgeboren :ally]

Anthony, have we settled on a solution for this? the fxA approach? The icon approach?

Comment 4

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

Not to my knowledge. But at the same time, I don't think there's an action item here right now. Did you have a string in mind for this bug that you wanted to correct?

Comment 5

[Allison Naaktgeboren :ally]

Then we certainly need to settle on a solution before an engineer can implement anything. 

Our problem is that the single button for showing/hiding a password can be dramatically different lengths, screwing up the layout and giving the user a jarring & unpleasant experience. 

Switching between any two strings is going to have this problem in some locale(s), so we need either a single string approach or a no string approach.

Options include

= Making the button say something like "flip" or "Toggle", so that it is the same string regardless.

= Replacing Show/Hide entirely and use icons to signal show and hide.

= We reformat the page when the user pushes show or hide to accommodate the length of the word. I this this is the worst idea of the set, resulting in a disjoint and jarring experience. 

I'm open to other ideas. Perhaps Margaret or Barbara has some? Flod works with localizers, perhaps he has seen a novel approach to the problem.

Comment 6

[Anthony Lam (:antlam) Find me, @antlam on Slack!]

Going to CC' Ryan Feeley here because I think he's been doing the most thinking about this and we should be keeping consistent.

Ryan, not a high priority but this is something we talked about in our passwords work. Any development here that we should be aware of?

Comment 7

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

"Flip" or "Toogle" are a pain to translate, some languages don't have a single verb that expresses that concept, so you end up with ugly things like "Enable/disable", "Select/deselect", "Add/remove", etc.

The safer approach is usually to have a separate checkbox to "Show password". It embeds the concept of "toggle", and have plenty of space for longer translations.

See also bug 975013 about a similar issue.

Comment 8

[Barbara Bermes [:barbara] - NI please!]

mnoorenberghe wrote a blog post about this:
http://matthew.noorenberghe.com/blog/2015/07/firefox-password-manager-update-2015-Q1

Comment 9

[Ryan Feeley [:rfeeley]]

Attachment: show-password-default-on.png

We could take up more space and use a checkbox. I would love to do this as an experiment n FxA. Thoughts Vlad?

Comment 10

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Note that it might get long. This is from the current password managed in Firefox desktop (not really sure why Polish has an entire sentence)
https://transvision.mozfr.org/string/?entity=toolkit/chrome/passwordmgr/passwordmgr.properties:showPasswordPlaceholder&repo=aurora

Comment 11

[Allison Naaktgeboren :ally]

(In reply to Francesco Lodolo [:flod] from comment #10)
> Note that it might get long. This is from the current password managed in
> Firefox desktop (not really sure why Polish has an entire sentence)
> https://transvision.mozfr.org/string/?entity=toolkit/chrome/passwordmgr/
> passwordmgr.properties:showPasswordPlaceholder&repo=aurora

I think I'd support a layout where Show Password [x] is on a separate line below the password field. It's a single string solution that can handle a really long localized string with grace and doesn't suffer if the string is short.

Comment 12

[Ryan Feeley [:rfeeley]]

This is true. The main reason we didn't opt for that is conventionally the 'Remember me' checkbox is there.

Comment 13

[:Margaret Leibovic]

For a simple fix, I think we should just follow the same pattern we use in the current FxA login screen (have a single "Show" button with an enabled/disabled state).

I don't think we need to try to invent a new UX pattern here, the main thing we're trying to fix is the fact that the "Hide" string can be a different length in other locales. It sounds like that's why Chenxia filed this bug.

Comment 14

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