
Use Dropdown Login Boxes for a Faster Login - UXMovement
http://uxmovement.com/design-articles/dropdown-login-boxes-for-faster-login
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unsane1
Worst. idea. ever. I hate this on Twitter, it breaks the password manager and
it is an additional click just to show a login. How is it so intrusive to have
2 fields on a page?

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alabut
_How is it so intrusive to have 2 fields on a page?_

Depends on the design, goals and intended audience.

Form fields are harder to ignore than most page elements and have a sort of
gravitational pull on the eyeballs, so you can easily imagine situations where
it's better to avoid them. Like, say, on public marketing pages for first time
visitors to a microblogging app that's way hard to explain to your average
non-blogging Yahoo-using grandma in flyover country.

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bmelton
That makes sense, and says what I've felt/intuited (but never known for sure).

I typically put a username / password box on any pages I want people to be
logged in for. Now, obviously, this includes pages that they must be logged in
for, but those pages should enforce authentication more strictly; But what I
really mean are the pages that don't 'require' authentication, but for any
number of reasons, it is preferred.

Also, I've always believed that the 'two boxes on a page' approach draws them
torwards the login, and acts more as a call to action than Twitter's dropdown
approach.

As alabut says though, use where appropriate.

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hailpixel
Javascript, password managers & regression aside, the thought process behind
the article makes sense. What sent up red flags is the only evidence for this
UX is anecdotal: "twitter uses so it must be good."

When developing UX methods, you must test the fuck out of them. I wish the
article had some numbers to back up their "we removed two boxes"
illustrations.

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hypest
from day-one (Oct 2008), I designed the login form on <http://costpad.com> to
be

    
    
      - embedded in every page so the user logs in whenever he/she wants
      - always shown so a single click starts the process
      - keyboard-friendly by using Tab to navigate to the input boxes
      - Javascript-less friendly, so to be able to log in without JS 
       and not having to "bypass" my beloved NoScript
      - big-styled (as the rest of the webapp) so to be tablet/finger friendly.
    

Yes, this implementation occupies quite a lot of space up there, but I think
the trade-off is fine.

The popup/dropdown login form is certainly cool and space-saving, but I
couldn't come up with an implementation that satisfies me...

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nodata
I've only seen dropdown login boxes on non-SSL pages. Which means I never use
them.

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Davertron
This was the point I wanted to bring up; if you have your login form on a non-
ssl page, it's possible for a man-in-the-middle attack to replace the "action"
on the form and send your login credentials anywhere they want. To prevent
this with the drop-down login, you have to make your homepage SSL, which has
other drawbacks.

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petercooper
How does popping up a new set of elements but merely on the same page entirely
remove the "visual processing" step? You still have to look and work out how
the form works, much the same as if it were on a new page.

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Tautologistics
It does not remove the visual processing step, it simply reduces the amount of
visual processing required.

Eyes tend to automatically fixate on motion. When the whole page transitions
the eye has no single point of change/motion to fix on and must scan the whole
page to identify the shapes that represent a login form. With a dropdown, the
only change/movement is the login form, which the eye is naturally drawn to.

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Ainab
just having two fields and login button achieves much more than his method.

it should read second lowest method for login.

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rohitarondekar
I have one complaint with the Twitter login dropdown, when you miss the arrow
it loads the login page. That's fixed here but it doesn't work without JS. You
should probably fix that.

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Poiesis
To provide another example, there's reddit. Pop-up lightbox style. I've always
appreciated it not taking me from what I was reading.

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bruceboughton
Also worth noting how many of those examples use "login" as a verb. "login" is
the noun, "log in" is the verb.

