Hello, The Change Password dialog in About Me is, in my opinion, unsatisfactory. Problems: -------------------- Interface: The interface is (no offense) ugly and inconsistent. - How does a light bulb indicate authentication success/failure and valid input? - The explanatory text is changing to reflect any changes or errors in the process, but it is difficult to notice it changing. Process: The process is done in one large chunk (I think this has to do with using the passwd program as the backend) instead of the more logical seperation of authentication and then updating the password. Backend: Using the passwd program as the backend might be problematic, as it limits us when it comes to different authentication mechanisms (?). Suggestions: -------------------- Interface: I've fiddled around with Glade and come up with a draft to a more logical dialog. It can be found at http://joh.deworks.net/password-dialog/password-dialog.glade When opening the dialog, the new password section should be insensitive. Typing your current password in the "Password" entry and clicking on the "Authenticate" button makes the new password section sensitive (assuming the authentication went successful.) Further more, the lock icon should change to reflect a successful authentication. There should also be an inactivity timeout after authenticating the user in case the dialog is left open. I'm unsure where to put any status messages so they are visible to the user. Any ideas on this? Backend: Maybe using PAM is better than using passwd, or is this a problem for not-PAM-enabled systems? An idea could be to make the dialog authentication independent (as PAM is designed for), but this would require a lot more work! Anyways, suggestions are welcome! If I get the green light on this, I can start working on it as my first contribution to Gnome :) -- Johannes H. Jensen <joh deworks net> deworks
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