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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

> don’t put logins in modals

LastPass fills out my username and password on modals just fine. Tested it out on Hertz just now. If other password managers don't... then they should be improved, no?

Why should a site bother with a slower page load when an instant modal works just fine, as long as it's properly implemented?

> don’t split login across multiple pages

I've never seen this done except when it's necessary because depending on the account identifier (username) a different authentication method is used -- e.g. redirecting to your institution's authentication page.

Of course if you have a direct account you have no idea and it just seems annoying. But it is a feature, not a bug.

I'm not convinced the author has really done their full research here.

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>> don’t split login across multiple pages

>I've never seen this done except when it's necessary because depending on the account identifier (username) a different authentication method is used -- e.g. redirecting to your institution's authentication page.

I've actually noticed this becoming more common and I find it super annoying when there's no obvious need for it. Even Google does this now:

https://i.imgur.com/ZH1yiqH.jpg

That allows federated login. You can federate Google login to Okta etc.

Yes, my school used to do this.

Paypal and iCloud have 2 step logins as well. It doesn't seem likely that they would need to support federated logins.

And yet they most likely do.

> LastPass fills out my username and password on modals just fine. Tested it out on Hertz just now. If other password managers don't... then they should be improved, no?

Yes, it works if you visit the site, bring up the login model, and then tell the password manager to fill it in (or are configured to auto populate).

However, many password managers have a feature where you find the site in the password manager, and click to visit it, at which point it loads the site and automatically logs you in. When you get used to it, it is a convenient workflow basically merging bookmarks and passwords management into one tool. This is the feature that modals break.

I can see how that could be a problem with modal logins, but it doesn't have to be a show-stopper: when the modal opens, the site could history.pushState() to a URL that would, when navigated to directly later, serve the page with the modal already open.

Not that I know off-hand of any sites that actually do that, but the possibility exists.

Not being able to link directly to the login, which can be a pain for customer support people (since they have to give a bunch of instructions described above rather than simply providing a link).

I think most password managers can handle modals, but it really depends on the site. I use 1Password and I'd say most of them work, but sometimes it doesn't.

The point remains -- the WordPress login page is simple and it just works. Why does everyone need to get so fancy with a login prompt?

Some modals do indeed seem to not-work with password managers. Twitch, Ebay, and Taobao are notable examples in my case.

The infuriating, terrible SSO authentication sequence for the BigCo that I work for is a two-to-three page sign-on for absolutely no valid reason. It is infuriating.

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