Fully consistent UI

Feature Requests Password Manager
1

There are a couple of existing feature requests already regarding user interface (UI) consistency.

I’m going to be so bold as to say these do not go far enough.

I see three distinct UIs: The web browser extension (as tested in Chrome), the pop-up window from that extension, and the web vault. All three are quite different right now. Clicking on the URL does not always cause the same behavior, and icons listed next to the URL are different. And in the web vault, we have no icons next to the URL, but clicking on the URL shows us a number of icons with various actions.

Here is what I recommend:

  • One line for each item should be identical in all three UIs. This line should give us the following choices, not necessarily in this order: Autofill, View, Launch, Copy password, Copy username.

  • The order of these choices should always be identical.

  • Each choice should always look the same.**

If a choice is inapplicable, it should be grayed out but still present. Optionally, clicking or hovering on a grayed-out choice may explain to the user why it’s grayed out and how to access it.

I won’t present detailed reasons for the above recommendations, because there is a lot of UI discussion online and it will generally support my recommendations. Briefly, however, the idea is that our brains are least overloaded when things that look the same act in the same way, things that look different act differently, and things are in the same place every time so we don’t have to search for them.

2

I support your suggestions but worry that by creating yet another feature request we are just diluting our voting influence. I’d recommend at least commenting on the other requests to refer to yours…I wonder if they could be merged into one.

3

The other feature requests are somewhat specific. I’m stating more general UI principles. So there’s no real dichotomy here.

The people who filed the other feature requests are presumably following the overall discourse, so I don’t want to add too much noise by adding cross-referenced comments in both directions.

4

Voting has never been a good mechanism for enabling features. People vote for things they already know about, not for fundamental structural things that will make a much greater difference in the long run.

5

Again, I agree. But this is the system we’ve been given to submit our requests. And presumably the powers that be are using the voting information to prioritize work on the project (if not, then we need a different system!).

Speaking of the “powers that be”…the only moderator in this forum appears to also be the only developer on the whole project: @kspearrin. I can only imagine how split his attention must already be with work on various platforms, marketing, etc.