Reposting some thoughts brought about in a forum thread about this. Just a quick thought for a stable middle-grounds.
As usual, you start up with one single box visible asking clearly for Username. After entering your username, that box stops being an edit box (instead just becomes a bit of text displaying the name for the account being logged in to) and the password box or whatever else appears underneath. This would actually be more user-friendly than the usual two-box design, because if someone doesn't have a password (actually I'm not sure if that is possible in Ubuntu, but if it is) then they aren't confused by how "The computer asking them for a password". This design could also be given some nice eye-candy: The user login images could justifiably appear after a username is entered. Also, of course, there is cancelling entry of the password and going back to entering a username. With a single input box, I can see reason why this is not a favourable way to do things; if "the dumb user" accidentally hits escape while entering their password, he may not notice the change from "Password" back to "Username" because the on-screen queue would be so subtle! (Only a single thing would be changed). When the input box is actually moving to a different point on the screen, that change is extremely obvious so it isn't at all misleading to have such an option. I also agree that an OK button below the input boxes would be a good idea; there are actually a surprising number of people who just don't understand the Enter key. -- Username/Password entry confusing for inexperienced users https://launchpad.net/bugs/36855 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs
