Suggestion: optional real Freehands Auto Fill (without need for Hotkey etc.

Justin Case

Dear team,



I am aware that there are several threads on auto filling. Since I consider this a _very_ crucial feature open a new one anyway. This currently keeps me from actively switching from Firefox passwords to 1Password.



Let me define what I mean by Freehands Auto Fill:

Login Forms are filled automatically with credentials without any specific action (hotkey, fill and go, 1O button, context menu) from the user. If several logins/accounts match the form, this shoudl be handled as by popular browsers (Firefox Safari), which will list the available logins if you click the account name input field in the HTML form to let you choose the desired login.



I am aware that by design this is currently not provided.

Let me argue why this would still be benefitial to many users like me:



-Go and fill is not useful if you have many logins (over 400 for me). I prefer to choose web sites by bookmarks, browsers support many ways to access them. Go and fill is just not for me.



-Instrumenting bookmarks with links to 1Password logins is unusable if you have many bookmarks (neer to 1000 for me). Instrumenting takes too long and makes the bookmarks tie into 1Password. I consider this unnecessary linkage of systems that will sooner or later create problems (e.g. if you move away from 1 Password or you use severaldifferent login solutions).



-Pressing Hotkeys, 1P buttons, context menus or screen menus interrutps the work flow and browsing experience. It is clear that this is highly personal. It should be optional if you want to initiate filling the form manually or if you want to have it done without your interaction. If you wish, add a warning if someone enables freehands auto filling to point out this may be less secure.



But please provide this option.



I case I have overlooked anything that is already there and implements this functionality, please let me know.



Kind regards,

Justin

khad

Welcome to the forums, Justin! Thanks for bringing this up.



As you mention in your post, this has come up a few times before, and I do not know of any current plans to change the behavior which I imagine would require 1Password to be much more “active” on your system, constantly monitoring everything and using CPU cycles and RAM. Since it is not hooked into the page rendering as the browser itself is, it becomes a bit more taxing on the system to monitor.



Offhand, I do not believe that browsers' built-in password managers support autosubmit, so they also require the manual interaction of either clicking the submit button or pressing the Return key on your keyboard. We have simply moved the interaction back in the chain of events a bit. Rather than interacting with the form after the browser has filled in your credentials for you, 1Password invites you to do so in order to fill the credentials. If you have autosubmit enabled, it also submits the form on your behalf so the level of interaction required in 1Password versus the browsers' built-in password managers ends up being equal.



We also consider the requirement to manually invoke 1Password before any of your sensitive information is filled on a page a security feature. We already protect against phishing attacks by only filling your Logins on the same domain for which they were originally saved, but depending on the site — perhaps a shared hosting situation where there are different owners of each directory on the server — it becomes advantageous to not automatically fill your sensitive information without your explicit permission.



Then again, we never say “never!” We will continue to discuss this internally.



I hope that helps. Please let me know if there is anything else we can help with.



Cheers,

Justin Case

Cheers Khad,



well, I do not know much about the mechanisms behind the scenes of Firefox/Safari, there is no hook you could use where the original password mechanism hooks into the rendering? The browser needs to do it somehow, maybe they offer a hook to replace the built-in method with a methin in an add-on.



And yes, Safari/Firefox will fill in logins hands free without user interaction, if there is just 1 matching login entry (for more than 1 you need to click the login name field for a drop down menu offering all matching logins).



Ok you argue you still need to click "Sugmit" on the page. However, this is less handy work (considering mouse movement) than navigating to the 1P button, then to the "Fill" menu entry and then to the matching login. It is also less than popping up context menu, navigating down to the last entry (that's where 1P is located in Firefox for me). YOur eyes are already close to the login field and the pointer always moves close to the focal point of the eye. It is thus more user friendly to have freehands filling or dropdown in the login field... you may want to check some HCI usuability experts.



I do login to different account in a short time, sometimes in front of students during teaching. Freehands fill and then pressing submit is still the way to go for me. 1P could be so much more useful with this little feature for me.



Another way to implement this could be if you provide a browser add-in that ties the browser passwd store to 1P, so that the browser native filling is used but the filled in data is retrieved from 1P instead of the native store.



Cheers,

JC

khad

Thanks for writing back.



Unfortunately, there is not a method to "hook into" browsers' password management facilities. The good news is that it is actually [url="http://www.google.com/search?q=browser+password+manager+security"]far more secure to store your sensitive information outside of the browser[/url], so we won't worry about trying to get back in. <img src='http://forum.agile.ws/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/skype_bigsmile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':-D' />



Try pressing ⌘\ on your keyboard whenever you are on a login page. It is just as fast as pressing Return — no mousing required — with the added benefit that it will pop up a list of all the logins for that page (if you have more than one stored). it is much easier to store multiple logins for a site with 1Password because of this.



You might also want to give [url="http://help.agile.ws/1Password3/go_and_fill.html"]Go & Fill[/url] a try. Among the many ways to access it, the default keyboard shortcut for the in-browser HUD is ⌥⌘\ which, like the Fill Login shortcut can be customized in 1Password's preferences on the Logins pane.



Of course, that is not even mentioning that 1Password is a cross-browser, cross-platform, [url="http://help.agile.ws/1Password3/cloud_syncing_with_dropbox.html"]automatically synchronized[/url] solution. <img src='http://forum.agile.ws/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/skype_smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':-)' />



If we can be of further assistance, please let us know! As I said before, we continue to evaluate these sorts of issues as we constantly move forward.

Justin Case

Khad,



thank you for your reply, but it is highly disappointing: you repeat facts known to me and I provided my reasons for not using the options you suggest in my initial posting.

With a feeling you do not care about about this customers reasons and first message I will drop the topic. The company does not seem to be interested. I will move on.



Best,

JC

khad

Hey Justin,



I'm sorry if you feel that I am not showing how much we at Agile care about our customers — including you! That is certainly not the impression I have been trying to give.



I have enjoyed discussing this with you and articulating the some of the reasons that your requested feature has not been included up to this point. I have also shared this thread with the rest of the team for internal discussion. Short of adding the feature to 1Password tomorrow, I'm not sure how else to show that we do care. <img src='http://forum.agile.ws/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/skype_smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':-)' />



Some of what I have included is also for the benefit of other forum users who may be coming across this thread not only right now but via search at some point in the future. I always like to make sure folks are aware of the existing features in 1Password in order to get the most out of it. My apologies if that came across wrong.



Kind regards,