157494 - [RFE] An option to prompt for the master password on profile startup

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Core Graveyard :: Security: UI, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Luke Reeves]

This would be a nice feature - the password could be prompted for when a profile
is first accessed as opposed to the first access of a secure site.

Comment 1

[John Unruh]

Reporter, can you give a reason why this would be a nice feature? Some browsing 
sessions you would not need your master password at all.

Comment 2

[Luke Reeves]

It's a convenience feature mainly;  I hate clicking on to a password-protected
site after my browser sits for a while and then being prompted for a password. 
I'd rather just get it over with at the start.

Also - and this is probably a different bug - password protected profiles would
(if they exist) depend on entry on startup.

Comment 3

[Kai Engert [:KaiE:]]

A disadvantage of this feature is that we would have to load and init the
security libraries right away on start. Currently, this is delayed until they
are needed for the first time for startup time optimization reasons.

Comment 4

[Luke Reeves]

I reported this a long time ago, marking as invalid since it makes much less
sense now than it did to me then. :-)

Comment 5

[John Unruh]

Verified.

Comment 6

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

*** Bug 359673 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Paul Novosad]

Just accidentally duplicated this as 359783.  I question the marking of this as invalid.

If not profile startup, master password request should at least make the request on load of a page with a saved password.  The current approach, to not load the prompt until a keystroke, or often several keystrokes have been typed into the username, is seriously intrusive and causes unnecessary delays, since the password manager prompt tends to grab some of those keystrokes.

An alternative would be to launch the prompt once the login username form loses focus, i.e. the user is tabbing from username to password.

Presumably, I either want to select a username from a drop down list, or type a username.  Waiting for me to press a key before launching the password manager prompt makes both of these approaches awkward.