Firefox:Password Manager:UI

Goals

Specific items from the Firefox3/Product Requirements Document:

• P1 / PASS-001a -- Only let the user save the password after they know the login has succeeded
• P2 / PASS-001c -- Improve usefulness of password manager
• P2 / PASS-001d -- Improve discoverability of autofill UI for multiple accounts on the same site
• P2 / PASS-001e, f -- Improve "Show passwords" window. EG, searching.
• P2 / PASS-001g -- Simplify and promote the use of Master Password

Other (some overlap):

• Get rid of popup modal dialogs where possible
• Opportunities to unify UI
• Make management and use of multiple logins less confusing

Out of scope for this pass:

• P2 / PASS-003a -- Generate random passwords for user
• Investigate the possibility of authentication-in-chrome for new content authentications schemes to use (OpenID too?)

Existing UI Touchpoints

• Authentication provided by user
  • Master Password popup
    • Enable/Disable Master Password pref
    • Change Master Password Dialog
  • HTTP authentication popup
  • Proxy authentication popup
  • Form fields in content
• Controlling what Firefox remembers
  • Saving user-provided authentication (except Master Password)
  • Blocking Firefox from certain places ("Never for this site")
  • Deleting existing logins
    • "Show Passwords" window in prefs
    • Shift-delete in an autocomplete field (only when multiple logins exist)
    • "Show Exceptions" window in prefs
  • Clear Private Data
    • Saved Passwords
    • Authenticated Sessions

UI Design / Mockups

(incomplete)

Notification Bar

• Replaces modal "Remember Password? Yes/No/Never" with a notification bar (ala popup-blocked notification bar)
• Replaces "Use Password Mananger to remember this password" checkbox on HTTP auth popup

• Visual appearance of the notification bar, color, transparency, vertical height?
• Overlay vs. pushing content down vs. pushing UI up
• How to dismiss the bar: close button vs. clicking anywhere else (content-only?) vs. forced choice. How to undo?
• Confirmation of saving/updating the stored password?
• How to deal with multiple notification bars being requested

Password Management

• Allowing filtering list of stored logins
• Allow editing some fields in-place?
• Sort list by eTLD
• The primary column ('hostname') should be JUST the hostname.
  • ...and port, if non-standard?
  • No 'http[s]://'.
  • ...Leave ftp:// there since it's uncommon (?)
  • ...Create a separate protocol column? And/or a column to indicate secure-only?

Other

• Presenting cases where there are multiple logins
  • For HTTP auth, need a "simple" bugfix to allow using a dropdown in the username field to select from multiple accounts
  • Not sure what more to do with form fields.
    • Mutate textfield into an editable menubox (so the dropdown widget gives a visual cue)?
    • Autofilling the last-used value (instead of leaving it blank) might help a little bit. Instead of seeing nothing ("firefox is broken") seeing one login might shift you to thinking that it's working, but you somehow can select a different value. OTOH, this is probably just wishful thinking :)
• Automatic login? We would need to design a second bar that lets users undo the automatic log in