Closed Bug 222653 Opened 21 years ago Closed 17 years ago

Password Manager should automatically display autocomplete widget for pages/sites where user has saved multiple logins

Categories

(Toolkit :: Password Manager, enhancement)

Product:
Toolkit
Component:
Password Manager
Type:
enhancement
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 376668

People

(Reporter: davidpjames, Unassigned)

References

Details

Attachments

(1 file)

Visual proposal for a password widget activator.
7.87 KB, image/gif
Details
With the switch to the new password manager we no longer display a pop-up presenting logins for sites where the user has multiple logins saved. The user now has to start typing one of those logins or use the down arrow to call up the autocomplete widget. The problem is that the user may not know that she can do that. Pierre Chanial suggests in bug 173565 comment #11 that we automatically display the autocomplete widget in such cases. Jesse Ruderman came up with much the same idea which I described in bug 220734.
*** Bug 216541 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 222367 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Frankly I've been astonished at the "Resolved" comments I've read in relationship to this issue?!?! especially as some haven't even tested the new PM with Hotmail? if you haven't tried it at Hotmail, how can you give an opinion as to whether a problem does or doesn't exist?? I can perhaps guess at where your indifference towards Hotmail comes from, but you must realise there's a hell of a lot of people have Hotmail accounts out there! I've tried the suggestion... ------- Additional Comments From steffen.wilberg@web.de 2003-10-17 07:59 ------- Start typing in your username. Password Manager displays a list with your stored usernames as soon as it can distinguish them. Does this help? Moving to password manager component and reassigning. ------- This DEFINATELY does not work on Hotmail!! I've tried it on another site and the "new" method of bringing up saved passwords does work, but NOT with Hotmail! (Have I missed something? or is the new way the PM works a well kept secret?) Not sure what you guys are doing? it seems to be 1 step forward 2 steps back?!?! Ever heard of the saying?... "if it ain't broke don't try to fix it!" It's fine changing things if you feel you can improve things, but I fail to follow what improvements you were trying to bring in changing the Password Manager? You seem to have changed things for no other reason than to make the Firebird Password Manager more like the Internet Explorer PM?? If the IE PM worked better ok make the change, but I don't think it does (and I've NEVER met anyone else who does either!) and as the Firebird PM worked in such a simplistic self explanatory way, it's not as if people new to Firebird wouldn't know how to use it? (PLUS IT USE TO BE RELIABLE!) So aside from the Hotmail bug, the way the new Password Manager "works" (or not as the case may be...) sucks big time! In my opionion put things back as they were and use your talents, time & experience on more worthy problems with Firebird (you could dump bleedin' Mozilla for a start, you've hit the ground running with Firebird why waste your time on a lame duck?) I've also found that on sites that do show some success/support with the new style PM, that it can sometimes take mutliple clicks, deleting of text in the username box, the down arrow to make the PM kick in!! (that is often a combination of these methods is required to wake the PM up?) so even on sites that your PM seems to support it doesn't ALWAYS work!?! Sorry, tried to be as constructive as possible. :) Thanks for your efforts
Hit escape twice. Then does typing bring up the autocomplete?
Thank you for your suggestion of... ------- Additional Comments From 9quawbieby0001@sneakemail.com 2003-10-17 17:08 ------- Hit escape twice. Then does typing bring up the autocomplete? ------- Hitting the escape key twice then using the down arrow does indeed seem to work on sites other than Hotmail. I still think the previous method of working was FAR SUPERIOR to this!! This new method has introduced completely un-necessary clicks & keystrokes!?!? The Hotmail bug is still present. Cheers
You don't need to quote people. Its all here on the bug. I commented about hitting escape twice on bug 220734 I found that hitting it the first time actually pasted some other form data into the blank. I would probably say that 220734 is a dupe of this.
Hoca: This bug is about replacing the now-gone focus-stealing pop-up of the old password manager with the an automatic opening of the autocomplete widget in cases where the user has multiple login ids. When this is fixed you'll be able to select the login id from the autocomplete dropdown without ever having to type anything. Bug 220734 is about the specific case of the form attribute value="" causing problems of its own. Chances are fixing this bug will fix that one, but not necessarily. Hotmail.com uses autocomplete="off" in the password field and that seems to create problems of its own (at least for me on Linux). Likewise, Yahoo doesn't get filled out automatically either. But those would both be separate issues/bugs.
Opening the autocomplete dropdown for the username field immediately on page load would be weird, especially if you would normally have to scroll down to see the login field. But opening it the autocomplete dropdown when the username field gains focus (by the user clicking, by textbox.focus(), etc) would be nice.
This bug affects other pages, including iWon and Excite Mail, both of which seem to have autocomplete=off, one for login name, one for pw field. I also want to point out that 99% of the times, if someone goes to a page with a login form, even if it's near the bottom of the page, they would want to log in. I can't think of a time when that's NOT what I do. So it's annoying to have to click in a field to get the autocomplete. But hey, if you're going to do that I'm not going to make a fuss about it because the current situation is so much worse.
Assuming that you guys ditched the password dialog because it was intrusive or disruptive to the browsing experience, you could use the status bar, much like Firebird does when an 'alternate stylesheet' is available. (Go to http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/alternatives.html and note the crayon box in the left side of the status bar. click it, a list appears of alternates.) Likewise an appropriate icon could show up when login options are available. It wouldn't interrupt the user and it would easily provide all the available login options.
> This bug affects other pages, including iWon and Excite Mail, both of which > seem to have autocomplete=off, one for login name, one for pw field. This bug doesn't affect that. Autocomplete=off disables the Password Manager, period. To enable Password Manager on such sites you have to employ Jesse's remember password bookmarklet. See also bug 222367. http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/forms.html#remember_password
Though it may be closely related, as I too do not see the password completor working until I start typing, but also FB doesn't prompt for the password managers password until late in the process of either saving, or needing a password for lookup. This has been busted work weeks, any news on a nightly build to resolve this?
Flags: blocking0.8?
Blocks: 227632
I guess I have been posting comments in bug 220734 when they should have been posted here. The form that I'm working on (http://ipac.kcls.org/ipac20/ipac.jsp?profile=dial--1--1--1&menu=account) doesn't have form attribute value="", so I guess this is the bug I should be watching. See my comments in bug 220734 for some a way to enable/disable this bug in Firebird 0.7. Also this bug has regressed further in the 0.8 test build (03.01.04 - 02:59:00).
I don't think this is important enough to block 0.8, especially because autocomplete is horked right now.
considering that this is by design, I don't think this comes anywhere close to blocking material.
Flags: blocking0.8? → blocking0.8-
"by Design"? If that is the case, I respectfully believe the design needs to be recosidered. Currently with this bug (design), I have to keep a written list of the four (1 for each member of my family) 8-10 digit numbers near the computer just to go and check on my holds at our library. Once I type in the id, the passwords are recalled correctly (that part of the design works great.) Somehow, a list of passwords need to be displayed in some obvious fashion. Another thing to note is my wife will not switch to the next version, if this bug isn't fixed. I suspect that there are a lot of people who will be very annoyed if this bug shows itself on their next "upgrade". This may not be serious enough to block 0.8, but please don't let it go another release cycle. Is there anything I can do to help characterize this bug further? Does anyone know if this bug present in Mozilla 1.6?
You should get a dropdown of remembered entries just by pressing the down arrow while the cursor is in the box.
That is... in theory. In theory you should get a dropdown of remembered entries just by pressing the down arrow while the cursor is in the box. But it's not so... at least not in latest 0.8 trunk ( Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040114 Firebird/0.7+ ) Only some times, maybe like 10% of the cases, do I get such remembered entries options. Most times they never appear, I am forced to remember and type my ID's, then, and only then, passwords are automatically filled in. On the other comment, as Kipp Howard's comment said... that it might be a "Design Bug", I agree. Maybe if the "widget to autocomplete passwords" is not a popup, then it should have a visible down arrow in the screen. Most users (except us advanced ones) would never even think of such a thing as "trying to use their keyboard down arrow".
WFM Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040114 Firebird/0.7+
> Maybe if the "widget to autocomplete passwords" is not a > popup, then it should have a visible down arrow in the screen. Most users > (except us advanced ones) would never even think of such a thing as "trying to > use their keyboard down arrow". Um, that's how IE does it. It autocompletes the username if someone selects it and fills in the matching password if you've told it to remember it. Maybe people would find this much more convenient than a pop up dialog.
Respectfully, I'm not convinced that what we currently have is "by design". More like "it'll do for now until we finish more urgent work". For evidence, I re-refer everyone to Pierre's comment #11 bug 173565 where the issue clearly is raised but is regarded as being relatively insignificant. CCing based on bug 173565 comment #21
I's been ages since I used IE, just used it a little to see what they do in these cases. I see that when I have a login remembered by it, when I double click inside the field it automatically displays the login options so I can chose among them. No need to use the down arrow. That's a nice feature, I must confess. Added to that, as it currently is in Firebird, if when you only have one login it is automatically prefilled, you end up with a great password feature. ------ currently: - When there are two or more remembered logins, nothing is prefilled (correct, but...) and the down arrow dooes not always work (just 10-20% average in my case). So there's a bug in current implementation of the down arrow. - Similarly, one could ask oneself if this is the way it should work (by design) anyhow. For user intuitiveness, if there is more than one login, the down arrow technique (alone) is not the best (in my opinion). I would go with something more visual. I used to like the popups, but now I'd go for IE's technique, only that with one click instead of a doble click inside the login area.
Has anyone considered reinstating the old logon popup, but in the sidebar? A pref could be added to disable it.
I think clicking in the field should trigger what the down-arrow does. It would be the simplest and most obvious solution. The sidebar won't happen, it doesn't belong in the sidebar concept, and forcing multiple layouts of the same page won't be nice for perf.
I'm attaching a visual proposal for what could be a way to visually aid in activating a widget to show available passwords. It has two examples: - 1. Small on the right upper corner. - 2. Normal slector size half transparent to avoid confusing with other type of form. I would go for option #1 as it would be less likely to confuse people, as no forms have a clickable area similar to that one.
If we're going for a visual widget, perhaps it should match that of the search bar (the small black arrow that appears to be in some 0.7+ nightlies and 0.8 onwards.
I read through all the previoius comments and one thing I didn't understand was why the Password Manager was changed to begin with. What did changing the PM get us? I'm a Mozilla 1.4 user and just downloaded Firefox to compare. As this bug notes, in Mozilla 1.4 when I go to my brokerage account where I have 5 different accounts, as soon as the page loads I'll get (sometimes....the master password popup, followed by...) a popup in which I can select the correct account, and then click submit or hit enter to login. In Firefox 0.8, I go to the page and get nothing. If I type a number that doesn't match any of the first digits in any of my account numbers, I get nothing at all. If instead I type a number that matches any of the first digits of my account numbers, then I get a pull down list of the account numbers that matched. And lastly, if instead I simply hit the down arrow key then I get the complete list of account numbers. (Of course, I didn't know this last down arrow thing until reading this bug text...) Anyway, back to my original thought....was this behavioral change between Mozilla 1.4 (which I realize is an old version) and Firefox 0.8 on purpose? Or an inadvertent change? If inadvertent...it'd be nice for it to be restored to its previous (expected and intuitive) behavior. If deliberate...what was improved? Thanks.
It is more IE-like.
It was removed because someone has decided to remove all popups from Firefox without necessarily having something to replace them.
And being more IE-like #28 is supposed to be good? Bah! If I wanted the MS ****, I'd use it but as far as this goes, this loss of functionality has been a royal pain and doesn't seem to be gaining any forward momentum. As for the pop-up removal #29, that is rather one dimensional as there still needs to be the popups for the master password and since when was it determined that all pop-ups are bad? They serve a specific purposes and need and these type of pop-ups are very different than advertisting abuse...
Users don't read dialogs. Its been established in numerous studies for usability etc. Use of dialogs is intentionally being restricted to criticial security/dataloss scenarios whenever possible. The point is to make it such that if you do get a dialog, its probably important enough to read. If simply clicking in the field/on a widget in the login field gave the option to select one of the stored logins, I see nothing wrong with that as your intent is obviously to log in. Some sites, however, might have useful content without logging in and I might not want to log in on a given visit. Having an automatic dialog in that scenario is a usability loss.
And the password manager dialog box doesn't qualify as 'its probably important enough to read' then I don't know what would because an event is happening, the user is logging in, so a dialog about which account and password to use, appears to be as seamless and tightly linked as you can get and yes, 'Important enough to read.' As for those sites where one chooses to remain anonymous, they can cancel the box and, if that is the majority of their browsing is anonymous, then let them disable the function of the password manager. At present, however, the password manager has been neutered and is useless.
I'd just like to further Mike's comments, which I agree with, to say that with the old system, a site loading in the background would still show the dialog, interrupting whatever you were currently doing. Not only do users not read prompts, the fact that it steals focus is (or was) far worse and often irritating. I don't think anyone will argue that the current system is perfect, but currently you can either use 0.6.1 or live with it (as I have chosen to) until 0.9 or 1.0 depending on how things go. This really must be resolved by 1.0 at the latest, along with the other major password manager functionality bugs.
Flags: blocking1.0?
You can hit the down arrow on an empty field and get the available logins.
Flags: blocking1.0? → blocking1.0-
*** Bug 245127 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
They should at least add an option to allow the Select User widget to be usable. It is still fully functional in the normal Mozilla builds up to 1.7rc2 so far, so their reasoning behind FULLY disabling is still null.
<<You can hit the down arrow on an empty field and get the available logins.>> You can, but this requires you to use the keyboard. If I select a bookmark or switch to another tab, my right hand is now on the mouse, not over my "Down" key. When I click to focus the field, there is no way for me to select from the list of available logins unless I press the down key, or start typing, both of which require me to take my hand off of the mouse. Instead of producing the effect shown in the first (and only) attachment, why don't we simply drop down the list of users when the field is first focussed (by keyboard or mouse)? I'll look into doing this now to find out the changes required, but I haven't yet figured out how to produce a patch, so I'll just paste my changes in here.
I just had an idea: How about displaying available usernames in the right-click context menu's? To avoid context menu bloat, only activate it when right-clicking on a username/password field. BugMeNot does something like this, I think it's a good idea.
I have to second comment #0 and comment #32. Right now, with FF 1.0, there is *no way to tell the difference* between - there are multiple logins and password manager is waiting on a keystroke and - password manager is broken, no logins have been saved, logins have been lost I couldn't get any of the login popups to appear, so I came here intending to report a bug. To find that IE's craptacular braindead behavior is being imitated is distressing. I don't *want* to have to press extra buttons or click on extra buttons. The browser *knows* it needs to ask me to choose, so it should just *ask*!
I agree with the previous post. The new behaviour is an improvement over the old pop-up password manager in that it doesn't interrupt the application workflow, but is a nightmare in everything else. Specially because it's not discoverable: a user might never know that she can request Firefox to show all the stored passwords. Another important error is that it only works when the login field is empty. If you select a password and then change your mind, the password manager will only show the autocomplete entry for the current login. You have to manually erase the text field to have the complete list of passwords shown again. A good feature to have would be a "blank field" entry added to the end of the passwords list. There are several alternate implementations possible which are better than the current one. I will analize them here now. Some have already been proposed, others are new ones: *** 1) Adding a dropdown arrow to the login field. This turns the text box into a combobox. Advantages: Its behaviour is similar to the URL bar (there's a good reason for it to have a dropdown arrow. That reason is also a good one for passwords). Simple and effective. It could solve the "wait until page is fully loaded" problem. Disadvantages: it could collide with real combo boxes. *** 2) Automatically open the password manager whenever the login field is focused. Advantages: easy to program. This also could solve the "wait until page is fully loaded" problem. Disadvantages: non-standard behaviour. Can be intrusive because it's an unexpected popup. *** 3) Adding an icon in the status bar for the password manager. Similar to the "RSS" and "Security" widgets. Advantages: Accessible on demand (i.e. only when needed). This interface is consistent with the other status widgets and would be easy to learn and use. Disadvantages: I can't see any. This would be my preferred solution. *** 4) Adding a toolbar button for the password manager. Similar to the Autofill extension (http://autofill.mozdev.org/screenshots.html) Advantages: Always accessible. Disadvantages: Uses screen space; unless enabled by default, few people would use it. But then it would add clutter to the inicial Firefox configuration. *** 5) Turning the password manager into a "error bar" like those for the popup blocker and the plugins & extensions instalation. Advantages: very easy to discover. Easy access to the Preferences dialog. Disadvantages: somewhat intrusive. It could be annoying to have it appearing at every login page. All the same this is my second preferred solution.
*** Bug 276063 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Flags: blocking-aviary1.1?
*** Bug 281301 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 292713 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to comment #43) > *** Bug 292713 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** Is there any good solution for this case?
Requestng that OS be changed, if possible, to Windows. As I, somehow, appear to have a pop-up showing my multiple logins under Linux.
Blocks: majorbugs
No longer blocks: majorbugs
this is an enhancement, not something missing from the intended design. Not going to block on this, but a safe patch would be considered.
Severity: normal → enhancement
Flags: blocking-aviary1.1? → blocking-aviary1.1-
Assignee: bryner → nobody
QA Contact: davidpjames → password.manager
Hardware: PC → All
Version: unspecified → Trunk
*** Bug 312950 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I never saw this problem, unless I had a code in userChrome.css that hides autocomplete popups, e.g. this one: /* Block Pull Down Menu History */ #PopupAutoComplete > .autocomplete-tree {display: none !important;} But maybe I'm just lucky :? Screenshot: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v337/tamarix/firefox/example.jpg
Here also a screenshot Gmail: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v337/tamarix/firefox/gmail.jpg But maybe I misunderstand the bug and the popup should appear without clicking in the box.
Summary: Password Manager should display autocomplete widget for pages/sites where user has saved multiple logins → Password Manager should automatically display autocomplete widget for pages/sites where user has saved multiple logins
It appears that this problem has been fixe in FireFox 1.5 beta 2. I, personally, haven't had this problem for quite a while but my wife has been experiencing the problem in FireFox 1.0.7 (and below) for a long time. Last week I upgraded FireFox to 1.5 beta 2 and my wife said that she is now getting the password popup so it appears this bug has been fixed in FireFox 1.5 beta 2. Is anyone else experiencing this bug in FireFox 1.5 beta 2?
This bug hasn't been fixed. See attachment 142698 [details] for a proposal of how the interface will look when it is.
Sorry for bugspam, but I meant to add that if this bug was only intended to cover comment 24, Firefox still requires a double-click before the autocomplete entries are shown, rather than automatically displaying the entries when the field is clicked on. This bug should probably remain open for that issue and/or the enhancement shown in attachment 142698 [details].
Let me restate the regression fix that my wife is seeing. It may not be what is proposed, but it is working a bit better than it was in 1.0.7. When she goes to https://catalog.kcls.org/patroninfo and needs to enter a card number from a list of 4 that she has saved, a list of card numbers shows up if she clicks in the field labeled "Library Card Number" while it has focus (meaning double click if it doesn't have focus). This means that she doesn't have to remember (retype) the card number to get the memorized password. In the past, after she typed in the card number, the password manager would supply the correct password. No drop down with a list of card numbers would appear at any time. Based on the original description of this bug, this issue has not been resolved, it is just that 1.5 beta 2 has fixed a regression that was even worse than the original description. Oh well, there is at least some progress.
With Firefox 1.5 on Windows XP, the following problem persists: I have found no way of choosing a username among multiple alternatives, regardless of whether the form field has the attribute 'value=""' (discussed in bug 220734). I have to type the entire username, after which the associated password is autocompleted. Hitting the down arrow (up front or after typing a partial username) does nothing. I have repeatedly attempted to migrate from Mozilla to Firefox, but have always ended up going back largely because of this annoyance.
Well it works by default, so Bugzilla is the wrong place for your problem. If Please visit http://forums.mozillazine.org for support.
(In reply to comment #54) > With Firefox 1.5 on Windows XP, the following problem persists: I have found no > way of choosing a username among multiple alternatives, regardless of whether > the form field has the attribute 'value=""' (discussed in bug 220734). I have > to type the entire username, after which the associated password is > autocompleted. Hitting the down arrow (up front or after typing a partial > username) does nothing. > > I have repeatedly attempted to migrate from Mozilla to Firefox, but have always > ended up going back largely because of this annoyance. > I have been experiencing the same situation exactly as you have reported, since upgrading to FF 1.5 also. I hope it is fixed soon as it is a major annoyance/hinderance!
Osioke, see comment 55. Your problem is unrelated to this bug and, as such, this is the wrong place to raise it. Either way, Bugzilla is intended for technical commentary and discussion on how to fix the bug. Please visit the MozillaZine support forums.
I have the same problem as comment 54 and 56 and I do not understand the suggestions on 55 and 57.
Someone really has to explain to me the logic of Fx guys about their priorities. How can such a bug remain open for such a long time? IE does it very well.
Flags: blocking-firefox2?
Multiple active usernames per site is not the most common case, and no one has stepped up to fix this. It'd be nice to fix, but we're at the point where we're going to start cutting down the blocker list, not add more functionality changes.
Flags: blocking-firefox2? → blocking-firefox2-
What is the source of the assertion in comment #60? I just reviewed the list in my Password Manager. I have the following: 2 entries for accounts at our county library, one for me and one for my wife 4 entries for accounts in my ISP's spam manager, one for my E-mail, one for my wife's E-mail, and two for the E-mail accounts of a charity that I head 2 entries for managing accounts at FreeFind (a free Web-site search engine), one for my Web site and one for the charity's Web site 2 entries for accounts at a major mutual fund group, one for my account and one for my wife's account 2 entries at a domain registry, one for my personal domain and one for the charity's domain 2 entries at Social Security Online, one for my account and one for my wife's account
Flags: wanted1.8.1.x?
Flags: wanted1.8.1.x?
Flags: wanted1.8.1.x+
Flags: blocking1.8.1.2?
Any progress on this? It'll be nice to take it for the next release if we can get a patch together and tested.
I don't know if the risk/benefit is there, unless we're completely disabling autofill... Nice to fix on trunk, but we're nowhere near a sane idea of what we'd do here, let alone working on it.
Flags: wanted1.8.1.x+
Flags: blocking1.8.1.2?
Blocks: 376668
Is this bug really different from bug 227632? For a while (1.5 yr), this bug blocked bug 227632.
[Yes, as I explained in 227632. No need to ask the same question twice in both bugs.]
Cleaning up the buglist by making this a dupe of 376668. This bug is older, but that bug is really targeting the general problem instead of the specific solution that has been argued in this bug. [Even though it happens that the last idea on the table is basically the same thing.]
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 17 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
Product: Firefox → Toolkit
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