I’ve created about ten sign-up forms the last year and all of them has a “Confirm password”-input. My only sure reasons for that extra input field are habit and preconceived ideas.

We are typing our passwords twice because

To find out the reason for the “confirm password” input field I did some light Googling. This is why other people adds an extra password field to their sign up forms.

a) We use this as confirmation that we typed what we meant to type.
b) It is a convention, it is what we expect and therefor get.
c) Web developers are bad habit forming idiots with preconceived ideas
d) if we type it twice we are more likely to remember it.

I am a combination

For me it is a combination. A is probably the original thought behind it, but it is also something that I just expect to be there. But I also think it’s legacy design. Something I should have abandon years ago, or at least when I learned to create a better solution of my own.

A – Confirmation

My guesstimate is that most people actually do type their passwords correctly, even if they only see stars or bullets. If they don’t, they will probably find out soon enough and use the “I forgot my password”-link. I don’t think everybody should suffer just because a few can’t type their password correctly.

B – Convention

It is actually not so much a convention now days as it might have been a couple of years ago. Just look at Virb or Facebook.

C – Idiocy

Most web developers aren’t idiots, but there are somethings we, I at least, do without thinking much about it. One of those things is probably creating an extra input and force you to type your password twice.

D – Memory

No.

Instead of confirm password

One solution is to just kill that extra input, like Virb and Facebook have done. Another is to replace it with a “Show Password”-checkbox using the Show Password Jquery plugin.

People who want a confirmation that they spelled their password correctly can tick the checkbox. Others can ignore it. And that I like, stuff you can ignore if it doesn’t concern you.

It’s certainly a cool product, but I wonder how useful it is? I got the feeling that all the applications in the demo would be easier to use with a mouse. At least the precision would be higher and the physical effort lower.