Keep usability instead of fanciness

Login/Password

I spend quite a lot of time on the internet, I have a lot of accounts on a lot of websites. I have a different password on each website, because having only one password for everything is not secure at all and some websites have strange password policies (so sometimes it's not possible to use the "usual" password).

But I have a quite bad memory, so I can't remember all of my passwords. Hopefully most operating systems or web browsers include a password management system (like Keychain on Mac OS or KWallet on KDE). Those managers keep all the logins and passwords you have for every websites. That's very useful for websites you don't visit very often. Once I went on a website I thought I never went before but my browser filled the credentials for me, I already had an account created a long time ago (I told you, my memory is not that good).

One good thing is that all your passwords are stored in a place that is much more secure than a sheet of paper, the keyboard's back or a text file on your computer.

Usually, when you go on a website and enter your credentials for the first time, the browser recognize the login and password fields and then ask you if you want your browser to store your credentials. That's quite simple and effective. I love this functionality.

But more and more often, due to the AJAX/Web 2.0 fashion, some websites, mostly owned by wannabe companies, put a fancy login/password dialog box which is not recognize by some (all?) web browsers. So they don't ask to store your credentials and you have to enter them each time you connect.

Interestingly, those websites often add a option to remember your login and your password which I don't use because I don't know how they are going to store it (and in fact I tried once but it was not working) and I want to store all my credentials in the same place so I easily retrieve them when I need to.

Some examples of websites not friendly for storing login/password:

• hotmail
• monster
• cashstore

Please, give me a simple login/password form!

Other (not related with fanciness this time, just plain usability (and browser compatibility?))

Today I had to go on microsoft website. I have to admit that their website is a mess and I didn't find what I was looking for. While browsing into it, at some point I got a popup asking me to answer a survey about using their website. Since I was starting being angry against the website, I took the survey.

It was quite interesting, most questions had valid possible answers like this one (guess which answer I selected):

And then I got this question:

Usually, when somebody ask me "Do you like me?", I don't answer with a number.

But the worst was at the end of the survey, well I think it was the end. The last page I had was a page with some questions, but there was no more "next" button. So I'm pretty sure that my answers on the last page were not taken into account, but I don't know about my previous answers. Usually there is a page at the end saying something like "thank you for taking the time to answer this survey" so you know it's finished.

Note: Yes I know, my blog does not look great with old web browsers and some parts of the theme are not finished 😉.