Comments on: Why are we typing passwords twice?

By: Praveen Verma

Praveen Verma — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:55:46 +0000

Interesting! There are situations when you are creating an account with someone sitting by your side. You do not want to reveal your password to this person by checking “Show Password” checkbox. I believe that typing it twice takes care of all these exception scenarios.

However, there is another scenario where conventional approach (typing twice) fails. What if, the caps lock is ON and the user unaware of it creates a password. Next time, when he tries to login with Caps Lock OFF the password obviously does not work.

I believe, conventional approach with your “show password” checkbox is a certain value add.

By: Anders LindÃ©n

Anders LindÃ©n — Wed, 05 May 2010 08:40:55 +0000

By: Anders LindÃ©n

Anders LindÃ©n — Wed, 05 May 2010 08:28:31 +0000

The discussion whether passwords should be masked or if passwords should be typed twice is redundant in favour of the question “we do we still use passwords”?

A “lost password” link is all thats needed!

And we also need a html input field, which is like a , but when the user presses the button, the email is filled in automatically!
Or it could possibly render as a selectbox, people use many emails nowadays.

By: Dominic Watson

Dominic Watson — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 09:14:26 +0000

At first I thought this was a wicked idea… but if you think about how people will use it. We type in the password a second time so that we can be a little more certain that what we have just typed does not contain typos. Ok so now you only have to do it once… but I think most/all users will want to show their password after typing it anyway and will feel a little uneasy if they’re in a public place. I’d prefer to just confirm my password when people are looking over my shoulder than tell everyone in the room to look away whilst I look at what I just typed :p I don’t think it is any quicker if they have to stop for a moment, look around them and then decide if they can uncover it, check.

By: Norik

Norik — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 16:49:41 +0000

Nice point,

here is the problem I have with

p
*a
**s
***s
****w
*****o
******r
*******d

What if there is someone over shoulder?

I guess this article is a better alternative to the problem of masking and password confirmation.

By: fulihan

fulihan — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 05:25:42 +0000

it’s a good idea!Support you

By: Jordan

Jordan — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:43:22 +0000

So add a checkbox for show password and if your on a projector or in a public place, leave it hidden, if your at home or sure theres no one else there, show it.

By: Karl

Karl — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:15:27 +0000

I like it. Anything that reduces the workload for a user is a step in the right direction in my opinion. I’m not really sure that all users (and certainly most clients) would be comfortable in submitting a password that had been typed only once into a masked text box. Clients would be worried about data quality and users (particularly non-proficient users) would be worried about typos.

So although somewhat controversial, I actually agree with father Jakob’s recent(ish) alertbox… Don’t mask passwords (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/passwords.html)… unless of course your application warrants it, for a real or perceived security need. So my approach would be:

1. One password box
2. Non-masked by default
3. Check box to MASK the password

Of course it depends on what and who you’re designing for, but as a default position I think this is good because it:

a) reduces user workload
b) allows a user to visually confirm password is as intended
c) can allay shoulder-surf fears of some users

Just my 2 cents.

By: Danny Sedor

Danny Sedor — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:58:37 +0000

I agree that most developers are creatures of habit and simply add the extra field because we always have. I am very much in favor of the “Show Password” query as a replacement for the redundancy that we are all so accustomed to.

By: Paul Olyslager

Paul Olyslager — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:35:40 +0000

I’ve been writing about the same topic and someone suggested to implement a system which apple uses on its iphones. After every new entry in the textfield, the previous entry changes in a dot.

p
*a
**s
***s
****w
*****o
******r
*******d

This system doesn’t need the extra mouse-click and people can quickly continue with filling in the form without any hassle. You can always read the conversation here: http://www.paulolyslager.com/why-do-passwords-appear-as-dots-in-a-form.