[whatwg] RFC: <input type="username">

[Dirk Pranke]

On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 12:08 AM, Eitan Adler <eitanadlerlist at gmail.com> wrote:
> Use cases:
> 1) A screen reader that sees a form with a type=username and a
> password field. The screen reader could just ask "Log in to this site?
> [y/n]?". No further context would be needed.
> 2) UAs can more easily discover login forms and offer things such as
> Firefox's Account Manager [1] or a "remember me" feature
> 3) Currently autofill for usernames looks for something like
> id="username" or name="username". However on certain websites this
> fails. Furthermore some websites offer a "find other members" feature
> where you could type in a username. I've often seen these fields
> filled in automatically with my name.
> 4) I'm sure there are others....
>
> The proposal:
> A type="username" is added to the input element. type="username" would
> MUST only be used for the name that is used to log in to the site. It
> MUST NOT be used for registration forms or anything else that requires
> a username. A form MAY have up to one (but not more) type="username"
> input field.
>
> [1] http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/accountmanager/
>

I think this idea is halfway to what I'd want to see. Namely, we
should add an <input type="login"> field that triggers a
powerbox/dialog (much like the <input type="file"> dialog) that can
collect whatever sort of credentials are needed (username / password,
two-factor auth, FB connect credentials, OpenID/OAuth credentials,
etc.). I agree that it should probably build on top of the Account
Manager spec.

I think the whole login process needs to be taken as out of page as
possible. Unfortunately, the auto-login mechanism in Mozilla's
prototype is probably too out of page, and so there should be a way to
trigger the login from an in-page element (hence the above).

-- Dirk