Confirm password field

[Jan-Christoph Borchardt]

Confirming a password is really cumbersome and not helpful. Remove the »confirm password« field in favor of a »show password« checkbox.

For reference, see Jakob Nielsen on the topic http://www.useit.com/alertbox/passwords.html

[Jef van Schendel]

I created a new branch that contains jQuery and a bit of code to start this ticket: https://gitorious.org/mediagoblin/mediagoblin/commits/jquery-start

So now it shows one password field and a "Show password" checkbox underneath it to switch from hidden to visible text. With JavaScript disabled, it only shows the one password box.

However, I think the behaviour described by J-C and on http://www.useit.com/alertbox/passwords.html intents to make visible text the default, with an option to hide it. Is that correct? At first I had my doubts, but especially when you first choose a password it actually makes a lot of sense.

[Jef van Schendel]

Oh, and there's still one bug I think. Two password fields are available, one of which hides the text and the other shows it. One of these is always hidden, the checkbox switches between them.

However, I think that only the "hidden text" passworld field's value is sent when you create an account. And that value is only updated after you click the checkbox. So if you use the "visible text" password field and don't click the checkbox after that, it will send either a wrong value or an empty one.

[Jan-Christoph Borchardt]

As far as I remember, for ownCloud we used this jQuery plugin: http://unwrongest.com/projects/show-password/ and didn't have issues yet.

And no, default should be hidden, with the checkbox »show password« unchecked by default. People still expect password fields to not show their password in clear text - and they should not do so by default (at least for now).

[Jef van Schendel]

Oh hey, you're online. I thought you were away for some reason. :)

Ok, that's fine then, that's the current behavior. And yeah, I came across that plugin while searching, but the code really wasn't that difficult to write and I'd like to keep it as clean as possible.

Things that still need to be done for this ticket, off the top of my head:

• Isolate JS into a seperate file (by Elrond's request)
• Put some space between the password field the checkbox
• The bug mentioned in comment #3

[Jef van Schendel]

Another bug: auth/change_fp.html (where you change your password) still uses the old method.

[Jef van Schendel]

Closing this ticket since I worked out the bugs listed above (except isolating the JS, which I'll do right now).

[Jef van Schendel]

For posterity: I've isolated the JavaScript in a separate file and I've also added it to auth/change_fp.html.

[Will Kahn-Greene]

The original url for this bug was ​http://bugs.foocorp.net/issues/485 .