608471 - seamonkey "remember password" panel too easy to miss

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, enhancement)

Description

[Jay White]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.14) Gecko/20100930 SeaMonkey/2.0.9
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.14) Gecko/20100930 SeaMonkey/2.0.9

The design of the "remember password" panel is very bad UI.  If it is important for a password to be saved (and isn't it usually?) then a panel that attempts to merge itself into an inconspicuous gray background is not good design.  The user should at the very least be given the choice of having a traditional popup dialog asking whether the password should be saved.  Important features should not be hidden.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. visit web site that requires a password
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
Virtually invisible gray inconspicuous panel appears below tabs which rapidly disappears.

Expected Results:  
Should be a proper popup dialog asking whether password is to be saved.

What possible motivation could there be to make such an important feature virtually invisible?  If one wanted to ensure that the user had some faith in the software they are using then one wouldn't attempt to hide critical behavior.

Comment 1

[Philip Chee]

Perhaps you are using a third party theme? The notification box is pretty obvious in the default theme. On trunk (SeaMonkey 2.1b) we shall be moving to arrow boxes which should be really really obvious. See Bug 570004.

Comment 2

[Ian Neal]

A screenshot would be useful (with sensitive data blanked out if there is any).

Comment 3

[Jay White]

No third party scheme.  Just seamonkey straight out of the box.  In older versions there was a modal popup dialog asking to save passwords.  That always worked. Never failed. 100% guaranteed to never be missed.  It was the perfect way to present critical information.

But now, somebody has attempted to make it possible to overlook.  Now somebody has attempted to make it blend in with the grayness of the other panels.  And response to it has become optional.

When I make the decision that I ALWAYS want to remember passwords then that is exactly what I want to happen.  I want to be stopped in my tracks and forced to make that decision.  I don't want to have a temporary panel appear somewhere which will disappear BEFORE I GET TO MAKE ANY DECISION.

I ALWAYS want to make that decision.  I don't want an optional decision.  I want DECISIVENESS and DEFINITENESS and CERTAINTY.  A wishy-washy disappear-on-its-own-accord gray panel that sometimes disappears before one notices it and therefore removes ones ability to make the decision that one want to make is simply NOT GOOD UI DESIGN.

Comment 4

[Philip Chee]

The reason for the switch is that too many people were complaining about the intrusive behaviour you prefer. i.e. they didn't want to be "stopped in their tracks and be forced to make a decision immediately". Apparently surveys showed that most people preferred to be be able to continue doing what they were doing and wanted that decision to be optional. I guess you are in the minority in preferring what many people consider to be intrusive "big brother" "you must do this before continuing" paradigm of the old modal dialogs.

Comment 5

[Jay White]

No, not "big brother" because a "big brother" attitude would involve making unilateral decisions.  Just like YOU are making!

A "big brother" attitude would be to unilaterally decide to not press the issue when the matter of deciding whether to retain a password or not.

A simple solution: in the preferences change the "Remember password" checkbox to a choice of "Never", "Ask on gray a inconspicuous Panel which might disappear before you notice", "Ask Modally", or "Always Remember".

That way you are improving the customer experience rather than making unilateral "big brother" decisions based on some majority rule overrides minority rights attitude.

I don't know why you didn't simply make the simple checkbox change if really all you wanted to do was to satisfy people who complain about intrusive dialogs.  Then they could have set "Always Remember" and they could get on with the lives unmolested by nasty dialogs.  Having a panel appear (which pushes page content downwards) might also be irritating those same people - or perhaps another disparate group of customers.

Comment 6

[Matt A. Tobin]

One option is to revert to the old behavior much like can be done with browser.xul.error_pages.enabled = false which results in a dialog error box instead of the nice "we cant %s" etc

I for one understand where OP is coming from. I too had completely missed the balloon like box on many occasions. Seamonkey is all about modern browsing with a classic interface and maintaining the tight integration that legacy users enjoy.

We do not want to alienate new users with our retro ways but we also do not want to alienate our legacy users for reverse reason.

-Matt A. Tobin of Binary Outcast

Comment 7

[[e-mail]]

(In reply to Matt A. Tobin from comment #6)
> I for one understand where OP is coming from. I too had completely missed
> the balloon like box on many occasions.

Actually the original bug report is filed against the infobar implementation that SeaMonkey 2.0.x used. The balloon popup notifications are optional though, you can switch back to infobars in about:config via the browser.doorhanger.enabled preference.