Techniques To Simplify Sign-Ups and Log-Ins • Hacker News Board

Re: Techniques To Simplify Sign-Ups and Log-Ins

#51

Post by reedlaw » Thu, May 05, 2011, 4:13 PM UTC

hellweaver666 wrote: post #49

bugsy wrote: post #46

I'm skeptical of such articles, but this one had a lot of good advice. I so hate country selection popups that have 200 countries in them, and United States is near the bottom even though 95% of their customers are in the US, or perhaps they don't even ship outside the US. So many sites do that and it is infuriating.

This kind of thing is the curse of using off the shelf e-commerce packages. You can easily avoid these kind of mistakes if you roll your own.

Then why does Skype do it for every out-going phone call? I have to select US from the drop down list every time I make a call even though my Skype number is US based.

Re: Techniques To Simplify Sign-Ups and Log-Ins

#52

Post by MatthewB » Thu, May 05, 2011, 4:15 PM UTC

These are all great suggestions. Smashingmagazine is a great resource for developers.

I'm not quite sure about a checkbox to confirm password...maybe I need to see it actually implemented somewhere to know if I like it.

Re: Techniques To Simplify Sign-Ups and Log-Ins

#53

Post by adamtrilling » Thu, May 05, 2011, 4:18 PM UTC

MatthewB wrote: post #52

These are all great suggestions. Smashingmagazine is a great resource for developers. I'm not quite sure about a checkbox to confirm password...maybe I need to see it actually implemented somewhere to know if I like it.

The checkbox isn't the confirm your password...it's to make the actual characters show up so you can see that you've typed the right thing.

Not sure I love the idea, because there will be certain situations when a user can't use it, but it's worth considering...

Re: Techniques To Simplify Sign-Ups and Log-Ins

#54

Post by atacrawl » Thu, May 05, 2011, 4:18 PM UTC

Hovertruck wrote: post #4

"Use a Question Mark Icon for the Password Recovery Link" Am I the only one who thinks that is really unintuitive? I don't even think clicking on that icon would cross my mind as a user, and I would spend my time trying to find the "Forgot Password" link.

You're right. In fact, the number one lesson I've learned designing websites is that any time you're sure that users will understand what you mean, they absolutely will not. That's the one tip from this article that I completely disagree with.

Re: Techniques To Simplify Sign-Ups and Log-Ins

#55

Post by beagle3 » Thu, May 05, 2011, 4:23 PM UTC

reedlaw wrote: post #51

hellweaver666 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of thing is the curse of using off the shelf e-commerce packages. You can easily avoid these kind of mistakes if you roll your own.

Then why does Skype do it for every out-going phone call? I have to select US from the drop down list every time I make a call even though my Skype number is US based.

My skype defaults to the country listed in my profile. Maybe yours does too?

Re: Techniques To Simplify Sign-Ups and Log-Ins

#56

Post by kwantam » Thu, May 05, 2011, 4:28 PM UTC

dvdhsu wrote: post #29

arank wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think its done to prevent brute force attacks on passwords. If someone knows that username was correct and password wasn't, he knows something! That's why the message 'username or password does not match' and that's why both the fields needs to be empty when page loads with error.

Depends on whether the login username is public or not. If you're on a community based site where others can see your username, there's no reason to hide it. Anybody trying to brute force your password is probably specifically targeting your account. On the other hand, if you're on a service where other people cannot see your username, it would indeed be better to return a 'username or password does not match' error.

I don't think the idea is to indicate whether or not the username is correct. No matter what the user enters for the username, when you spit back "username or password incorrect," fill the username with what they typed. A brute force attacker gets no more information than he would with an empty username field because what comes out is identically what he put in, but a real user who mistyped his password knows this immediately by checking the username field and verifying it's correct.

Re: Techniques To Simplify Sign-Ups and Log-Ins

#57

Post by g_lined » Thu, May 05, 2011, 4:30 PM UTC

andypants wrote: post #18

Does anybody else think unmasking the password field is a terrible idea?

A lot of the time I use a computer outside of work, I am alone in a house into which no one can see or I am alone in a house with my partner with whom I share all of my passwords. As such, I'd rather have the option of unmasking my password because it makes things easier for me. I use long passwords and so it's not rare (though neither common) for me to type it wrong so I end up typing my 'password' 4 or 6 times.

Re: Techniques To Simplify Sign-Ups and Log-Ins

#58

Post by Timmy_C » Thu, May 05, 2011, 4:35 PM UTC

Tichy wrote: post #12

a3nm wrote: post #6

Using OpenID makes the rest of the techniques moot (except for OpenID providers), right?

I think OpenID has proven to be uneffective, some (HN popular) sites have removed it again (37signals? not sure). I have problems with OpenID, too, because I tend to be unable to remember which OpenID login I used for a site.

Why do you use more than one? I thought the point was that you could sign in once with your OpenID and be signed in everywhere.

Re: Techniques To Simplify Sign-Ups and Log-Ins

#59

Post by mekoka » Thu, May 05, 2011, 4:38 PM UTC

andypants wrote: post #18

Does anybody else think unmasking the password field is a terrible idea?

I think it depends of the sensitivity of the material in the website. e.g. I would never do this for a financial service website, just in case I get sued later. If your website doesn't require https for logins, then unmasking the password at registration time is the least of your worries.

It should nonetheless be noted that many browsers cache values entered in non-password fields, so if someone is using a shared computer to register, the next person might only have to double-click on the non-hidden password field to see a list of previously entered passwords. Not so good.

Re: Techniques To Simplify Sign-Ups and Log-Ins

#60

Post by r00fus » Thu, May 05, 2011, 4:44 PM UTC

MatthewB wrote: post #52

These are all great suggestions. Smashingmagazine is a great resource for developers. I'm not quite sure about a checkbox to confirm password...maybe I need to see it actually implemented somewhere to know if I like it.

It's basically equivalent to the "show characters" checkbox in your wifi password entry.