Author Topic: 'Folders' and 'Accounts' - correct usage  (Read 18810 times)

Offline tanstaafl

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'Folders' and 'Accounts' - correct usage
« on: July 15, 2005, 01:31:00 PM »
Ok, upon doing a little due-diligence, I came across this thread:

http://tinyurl.com/8p9tl

Thie helped to clear up what was some confusion on my part with respect to the correct usage of 'Folders' and 'Accounts'. Following is my take on the current state, and some suggestions to make these a bit more user friendly.

I'd been thinking about 'Accounts' in terms of a given base URL - one Account per base URL. But I now see that that is what is meant by 'Folder', correct?

So, just for clarification purposes:

A 'Folder' is meant to relate to one and only one 'Base URL' (ie, google.com), and 'Account(s)' under that 'Folder' would be created for each username/password pair that you wanted to manage for that Base URL?

If my understanding is now correct, then I think the term 'Folder' should be changed to something like 'BaseURL', 'URLProfile', or something like that to more clearly reflect its usage. Then 'Accounts' would be appropriately named ('Identity' would also be acceptable, but I don't see a need to change it).

I would also change the 'Defaults Options' to just 'Defaults', or at least, 'Default Settings' or 'Default Account Settings', to keep things in context.

I sure hope I understand these correctly now, and I look forward to your correction or even better, confirmation), Eric.

Charles

Offline Eric H. Jung

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'Folders' and 'Accounts' - correct usage
« Reply #1 on: July 15, 2005, 05:33:52 PM »
Hi Charles,
Folders are intended to be a collection of accounts. Most typically, I imagine people would create folders as you describe (and as my screenshots show) -- one per "base URL"; e.g., yahoo.com.

However, there's no reason one couldn't create folders based on some other categorization. Example: by identity/profile. Say I frequent a number of forums/websites/email systems with different usernames. I might choose this kind of folder structure:

ejung
  |
  --- passwordmaker.org forums
  --- invisionfree.com forums

tom_cruise
  |
  --- passwordmaker.org forums
  --- invisionfree.com forums
  --- yahoo email

charles
  |
  --- gmail account


Thoughts?
-Eric
« Last Edit: July 15, 2005, 05:34:23 PM by grimholtz »

Offline tanstaafl

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'Folders' and 'Accounts' - correct usage
« Reply #2 on: July 15, 2005, 05:58:18 PM »
Ahh... now I see.

I'm headed to lunch now, but my initial response off the top of my head is:

What you are talking about is simply a different way of Viewing/Sorting/Organizing login accounts, so how about something along the lines of Thunderbird's 'Saved Searches' feature? A way to create custom views based on custom defined criteria? For example, have a new Primary Tab called 'Organize Accounts'', use 'View Categories' or something as the method of organizing, and let the User create as many 'Categories' as they want, then they can add an Account to as many different Categories as they want, so that it shows up in each one. They would all show up in the 'BaseURL' category, but other than that, the User would have to manually add an Account to a custom view.

Anyway, as I said, that's just off the top of my head, so if it's really dumb, just ignore it... ;)

Thanks,

Charles

Offline Eric H. Jung

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'Folders' and 'Accounts' - correct usage
« Reply #3 on: July 15, 2005, 07:05:44 PM »
Sounds like a good idea, but I'll have to add it low on the priority list... there are much more critical things I think than account organization/categorization. Wouldn't you agree?

Offline tanstaafl

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'Folders' and 'Accounts' - correct usage
« Reply #4 on: July 15, 2005, 07:10:15 PM »
Oh, yeah - should have made that clear that this is low priority for me too...

;)

Offline tanstaafl

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'Folders' and 'Accounts' - correct usage
« Reply #5 on: July 15, 2005, 07:31:42 PM »
I would like to see one cosmetic change though...

Either...

1. Rename 'Defaults Options' to 'Default Account', or

2. Rename 'Defaults Options' to just 'Defaults', and make it a button next to 'Settings' instead of a list entry under 'Accounts'.

The word 'Options' clashes with 'Settings', and it is awkward the way it is - and I'm fairly sure the 's' in 'Defaults' in 'DefaultS Options' is a typo, no?

Offline Eric H. Jung

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'Folders' and 'Accounts' - correct usage
« Reply #6 on: July 15, 2005, 08:20:55 PM »
I already changed it to "Defaults" as the name and "Default settings for URLs not elsewhere in this list" for the description, as you previously requested.

Let me know if you'd like a button instead of an accounts tree entry. Remember, changing it to a button (and moving it out of the tree) will prevent you from "previewing" any of the settings in the tree columns.

Regards,
Eric

Offline tanstaafl

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'Folders' and 'Accounts' - correct usage
« Reply #7 on: July 16, 2005, 07:06:33 PM »
I don't know - I can think of arguments for both ways - how much trouble would it be to have this be optional?

"Show/Hide Default Account Settings in Accounts List"

Maybe overcomplicating it a bit though.

As long as the name is changed, I don't see anyting wrong with leaving it in the Accounts list...

Offline Eric H. Jung

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'Folders' and 'Accounts' - correct usage
« Reply #8 on: July 18, 2005, 05:39:22 PM »
Quote
As long as the name is changed, I don't see anyting wrong with leaving it in the Accounts list
OK, I'll leave it there for now since I've got plenty of other things to work on.

As a related question, what do you think of renaming Folders to Groups?

-Eric

Offline tanstaafl

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'Folders' and 'Accounts' - correct usage
« Reply #9 on: July 18, 2005, 09:47:43 PM »
Quote
As a related question, what do you think of renaming Folders to Groups?

That works - even if/when you get the 'Views' functionality working, I think I like 'Groups' better than 'Views'.

It just makes more sense to me to have an Account in there one time, and then if you want to have it in more than one Group or View, just associate it with the different Groups you want it to show up in - but if you need to change the Account, you only have to change it once.

You've got my vote for changing that lable to 'Groups'.

Offline Eric H. Jung

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'Folders' and 'Accounts' - correct usage
« Reply #10 on: July 18, 2005, 10:14:11 PM »
OK. It will be named Groups in 0.7.2 (or whatever comes next)... I just released 0.7.1 so it's too late for that one.

Offline tanstaafl

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'Folders' and 'Accounts' - correct usage
« Reply #11 on: July 20, 2005, 06:56:23 PM »
Speaking of which... I just installed 0.7.1...

I thought you said you had changed 'Defaults Options' to just 'Defaults'?

Mine still says 'Defaults Options'...

Offline Eric H. Jung

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'Folders' and 'Accounts' - correct usage
« Reply #12 on: July 20, 2005, 07:22:51 PM »
Quote
Mine still says 'Defaults Options'
Yes, that's because your passwordmaker.rdf was already created with "Default Options". You have two choices:

1. Hand-edit passwordmaker.rdf, changing "Default Options" to "Defaults"
2. Create a new Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape profile and re-install Passwordmaker. A new RDF file will be created with "Defaults" instead of "Default Options"

-Eric
« Last Edit: July 20, 2005, 07:23:30 PM by grimholtz »

Offline tanstaafl

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'Folders' and 'Accounts' - correct usage
« Reply #13 on: July 20, 2005, 08:57:55 PM »
Yikes...

Is that a bug? Or just the nature of FFox extensions?

I'd much prefer that when I uninstall an extension (I generally uninstall the old one before installing the new), it is completely gone, with no remnants hanging around...

The reason this concerns me is, what other changes that you make will not be reflected because I had a previous install?

Thanks for the explanation though...

Offline Eric H. Jung

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'Folders' and 'Accounts' - correct usage
« Reply #14 on: July 24, 2005, 10:01:45 PM »
Charles,
Sorry for the delayed reply. I didn't notice your follow-up post until just now (7/24).

Quote
Is that a bug? Or just the nature of FFox extensions?
No, it is the way PasswordMaker is written. If you uninstall PasswordMaker, the passwordmaker.rdf file does not get deleted. That way you can retain your settings when upgrading to a new version of PasswordMaker. If I wrote it such that passwordmaker.rdf got deleted on uninstall, then you'd lose all settings with an upgrade (unless I wrote some funkier code).

Quote
The reason this concerns me is, what other changes that you make will not be reflected because I had a previous install?
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Can you elaborate?

Regards,
Eric

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'Folders' and 'Accounts' - correct usage
« Reply #14 on: July 24, 2005, 10:01:45 PM »