RE: One more possible hole in UI?

I would prefer the first choice. I think passwords should have different
semantics than plain text fields. That would allow passwords to have further
security constraints besides what is echoed to the user. For example, in the
submission protocol, some type of encryption scheme could be added for the
password data when not using SSL or something, or access to the password
data could be restricted for client-side java scripts, etc. If you remove
the semantic notion of it being a password field, you lose this ability. 

An alternative to 1) or 2) could be something like this:
3) <textbox type="password" style="echo-char: '#'">...</textbox>

What do you think?

-Kelly
--
Kelly A. Campbell                       Software Engineer
<camk@channelpoint.com>                 ChannelPoint, Inc.
<camk@merlotxml.org>                    Colorado Springs, Co.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: T. V. Raman [mailto:tvraman@almaden.ibm.com]
> Sent: Friday, March 23, 2001 12:41 PM
> To: Berin Loritsch
> Cc: tvraman@almaden.ibm.com; XForms Mailing List
> Subject: Re: One more possible hole in UI?
> 
> 
> the two choices I am presently considering are:
> 1) Have a <password>...</password>
> element analogous to textbox 
> 
> 2) (preference as of last two days)
> <textbox echo="*">...</textbox>
> (default value of echo echoes chars as you type --echo ="*"
> displays '*' echo ="#" displays '#'
> 
> Since you say you're implementing this, what would your
> preference be?
> 
> By the way, I'll respond to the other half of your first
> note in the next couple of days--
> >>>>> "Berin" == Berin Loritsch <bloritsch@apache.org> writes:
> 
>     Berin> "T. V. Raman" wrote:
>     >>  coming in the next draft.
> 
>     Berin> (Password textbox issue)
> 
>     Berin> Is there any way to get a feel for the current
>     Berin> discussion on this?  Is this going to be a CSS
>     Berin> style element?
> 
>     Berin> The reason I ask is that I am writing a server
>     Berin> side form processing system based on the XForms
>     Berin> spec, and if I have to augment the current XForms
>     Berin> with current needs--I want to do so in a fashion
>     Berin> that is closest to what the end spec is going to
>     Berin> be.
> 
> -- 
> Best Regards,
> --raman
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> IBM Research: Human Language Technologies
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Received on Friday, 23 March 2001 15:10:08 UTC