improving Firefox password saving

Using Firefox's password saving functionality is a frustrating experience for me, and I suspect it's frustrating for other users too. It has several problems:

Problem #1: when Firefox remembers more than one password (or, more accurately, both a password and a username) for a given site, it doesn't autofill the login form or give me any clue what the usernames/passwords are until I correctly guess the first letter of one of the usernames.

Although I only have multiple accounts at a couple sites (principally those of two utility companies which made me create new accounts when I moved), I regularly enter my login info incorrectly and then mistakenly tell Firefox to remember it, so I now have invalid remembered passwords at a number of sites, and Firefox no longer autofills their login forms.

Problem #2: Firefox asks me whether it should remember usernames/passwords the moment I submit a login form, and it does so via a modal dialog, so I can't wait to see if my login attempt succeeded before deciding to save the info.

Problem #3: Deleting passwords is hard. It's only possible via the password manager, and every time I open the manager I have to rediscover how its list is sorted. Unfortunately the list turns out to be sorted by raw URL, so http://example.com/, http://www.example.com/, and https://www.example.com/ are all in different places on the list, and I have to hunt them all down to find the one(s) I'm looking for.

Fortunately, fixing these problems seems relatively straightforward.

First, when a user loads a login page for which Firefox remembers multiple username/password combos, the browser should display a non-modal status bar (similar to the popup blocker status bar) which lists the usernames and prompts the user to select one. When the user does so, Firefox should fill in the form and perhaps also automatically submit it. Here's a mockup of how it might look:



Second, when a user submits a login form with an unfamiliar username, Firefox should ask if the user wants to remember the info via another non-modal status bar, something like this:



Third, the password manager should support filtering, just as the cookie manager does, via a "Search" field that restricts the list to matching entries.

With these changes:

• users will be able to see and pick between multiple remembered username/password combos for a given site;
  
• users won't have to decide in advance whether to save that info; they'll be able to do so after seeing if their login attempts have succeeded;
  
• users deleting passwords using the password manager will be able to filter the list to find just the passwords they want to delete.
  

As a beneficial side-effect, users will be able to ignore the "save this password?" question instead of being forced to answer it every time. And to make deleting passwords even easier, we might include UI for doing so right from the "pick an account " bar (f.e. a context menu item).

Thoughts?

microsummaries feature proposal and prototype

After receiving some positive feedback on my "son of live bookmarks" idea, I wrote up a more comprehensive description and proposal for a Firefox feature that supports the display and updating of microsummaries of web page content (tip o' the hat to Mike Shaver for the term "microsummaries").

And then, since it's easier to understand a proposal with some working sample code, I hacked up a prototype in the form of an extension you can install into a Places-enabled build (milestone 2 or newer).

The prototype comes with built-in support for three kinds of microsummaries: eBay auction items, Yahoo! Finance stock quotes, and Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day. Just throw a link to one of those pages onto your bookmarks toolbar, and the prototype will start updating it regularly with pertinent information (the price/time left in the auction, stock symbol/price, and word of the day, respectively).

Thanks to Brian Slesinsky, who graciously trilicensed XPath Checker code, the prototype also supports user-defined microsummaries. Just context-click on some text in a page, then select "Watch [the text]" from the context menu. The prototype will add a bookmark to your bookmarks toolbar whose title is the text you clicked on, then it'll update it regularly.

Here's a screenshot which demonstrates microsummaries for the three built-in types plus a user-defined microsummary (the number of lines changed in a Bonsai query for "Places checkins in the last day"):



Note that this is an early prototype. It has limited functionality, lots of bugs, and relies on the rapidly evolving Places code (so is susceptible to bustage). Don't rely on it or expect any eventual Firefox feature to work like it. It's just a proof of concept.

Also note that it'll take up to 15 seconds for a bookmark you add to the toolbar to start showing a microsummary. After that, the extension will update the microsummary every 30 minutes.

Finally, note that Places mucks with your profile, migrating history and bookmarks to new databases. Make sure you know what you're doing (or are using a fresh profile) when you try out a Places-enabled build.

If I haven't scared you away yet, then give it a try, and let me know what you think.

Microsummarizer 0.1

resigning Bugzilla UI module ownership

I recently came to the realization that I don't have the time to function as an effective UI module owner for Bugzilla, so I have resigned that position.

Bugzilla's UI module owner needs to encourage good usability improvements, deflect misguided changes and unintentional regressions, and keep usability central to the development process.

Although coding can be involved, the role isn't primarily about writing code. It's about examining and intuiting user needs and behavior, determining how well the current UI meets those needs and supports that behavior, proposing and evaluating beneficial changes, and engaging the development community with reviews and discussion.

I wanted to do a lot of usability work in the last year, but for a variety of reasons I ended up doing only a small amount, and I expect to have very little time to do this work in the future. I'll continue to contribute where I can, of course, and I wish the project the best of luck with its UI development efforts.

If you're interested in helping out with Bugzilla UI development, watch the ui@bugzilla.bugs user on bugzilla.mozilla.org and join the conversations on the mozilla.dev.apps.bugzilla newsgroup and the developers@bugzilla.org mailing list.