Comments for The untitled

Comment on Are our passwords safe? by Seth

Seth — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:06:48 +0000

Unfortunately these days you can’t rely on whether or not a site encrypts its passwords, and the safest thing to do it to use strong, unique passwords for every website. However, managing that becomes a nightmare without a system. I have been using Mitto, an online password manager (http://mitto.com) to manage my passwords so that I can I can create separate, strong passwords for all the websites I am required to use, and not worry whether or not they are storing the password in clear text. With Mitto, every time I attempt to use their service from a new computer, I am required to either answer extra challenge questions, or it sends me a text message one-time code to my cell phone, just like Bank of America. It’s super easy to use, and free to sign up. I think they are going to offer a paid version sometime soon with some additional features, but the free version is awesome.

Comment on Are our passwords safe? by Andrea de Palo

Andrea de Palo — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:06:54 +0000

Maybe I’m a security jerk but sending clear-text password via email is non-sense in 2009: sending back forgotten password is a security risk.

In a utopistic world customers should understand this (yes, I know, it’s pure sci-fi )

Comment on Are our passwords safe? by Alessandro Bahgat

Alessandro Bahgat — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:27:04 +0000

I agree with you: passwords should be always encrypted, no matter what.

In my opinion, however, there are a couple of (bad) reasons that usually make webmasters refrain from doing that:
1. encrypting password is harder than… well… doing nothing
2. if you store your users’ passwords as clear text you can send them back (or give them at the phone) a few weeks later when they’ll have forgotten them.

The latter point, in particular, is a bit more delicate: I’ve seen at least twice clear text passwords being stated as a business requirement for e-commerce websites, for that exact reason.

As long as implementors don’t answer with an inflexible NO to that kind of requests, I’m afraid we’ll have to deal with this issue.

Comment on Are our passwords safe? by Andrea de Palo

Andrea de Palo — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:03:10 +0000

Informing the user about DB-side password encryption (or lack of) is, from my point of view, the wrong solution: encryption should be always used when managing password and other sensible informations.

Maybe we should consider encrypting also other user informations (like email), to limit damages in case of SQL-injection.

Or am I wrong?

Comment on Pagination directions by Alessandro Bahgat Shehata

Alessandro Bahgat Shehata — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 16:28:51 +0000

It appears to be a common issue when it comes to paging items by “recency”. You can see another ambiguous example if you go to the messages section of your facebook profile. Notice the two tiny arrows on the top of the page: which one brings you to the newer message?

Gmail uses full text links (Newer/Older) rather than tiny obscure icons, but it can still be confusing.

I was wondering, however, about Dario’s proposal: even it we put navigation controls in a column, we’d still have to sort them. Which entries should go on the top?
I’m afraid I’m missing the point here.

Comment on Pagination directions by Davide C.

Davide C. — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 13:06:50 +0000

Very interesting this post.
WordPress puts the “Older posts” on the left, but Blogger (blogspost.com) on the right… also the major make great confusion

Comment on Pagination directions by Dario Checchinato

Dario Checchinato — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 09:09:34 +0000

I am not that much into blogging, so i never put much thought into this issue, still, i noticed something like that in forums, and i remember it was a bit unnerving, although it was about threads and not articles.

From my point of view, using a navigation studied (and applied as a standard) for objectively ordered lists, such as google’s search page, is just plainly wrong. If i were to design navigation controls for anything which hasn’t a clear order (or has any form of order which could depend from the person using it) i’d either put them in a column (meaning, one below the other) or in a completely different page section, and let a couple of well-chosen icons take care of user-friendliness.

Comment on Itsme: is the desktop metaphor really over? by Posts about Web 2.0 as of December 18, 2008 | The Lessnau Lounge

Posts about Web 2.0 as of December 18, 2008 | The Lessnau Lounge — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 01:22:05 +0000

[...] on web 2.0, social network, e-commerce and entrepreneurs in Malaysia and Asia. Read More Itsme: is the desktop metaphor really over? – abahgat.wordpress.com 12/15/2008 Last week a friend of mine, knowing my increasing interest in [...]

Comment on Why Mac menus are on the top by Alessandro Bahgat Shehata

Alessandro Bahgat Shehata — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:39:38 +0000

@Dario, I’m not sure about that, but I believe that reserving some shortcuts to the file manager in Windows systems is likely to be a higher level OS-design choice, and not directly related to the behaviour of the menus. What do you think?

Good point about dual monitors, though: I wouldn’t have considered that issue if you hadn’t exposed it.

@Giax, one of the next posts in this series will be about Fitts’s law and how to hack it

Comment on Why Mac menus are on the top by Dario Checchinato

Dario Checchinato — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:52:44 +0000

and ofc i meant “unintuitive” on the example i made about programs on secondary monitors.