[sldev] RFC: design proposal for VWR-1071

[Melinda Green]

Philip Rosedale wrote:
> Argent Stonecutter wrote:
>   
>> On 2009-07-21, at 20:58, Philip Rosedale wrote:
>>     
>>> Automating the storage and retrieval of different avatar names seems 
>>> great!  BUT... making the login screen more complicated seems really 
>>> bad.   I have an incredibly hard time getting behind adding any 
>>> controls to that screen!
>>>       
>> So put the selector in the menu.
>>     
> That seems like a great idea!  Keep the login screen the same (or even 
> simpler than it is now) by moving the option of logging in as a 
> different user than last time as a menu option.  Definitely something to 
> think through!
>   
>>> Hmm... I haven't discussed this with any other Linden's, but perhaps 
>>> an interesting way to achieve both goals would be the following:
>>>
>>> 1.  Rename "remember password" to "remember me on this computer"
>>>
>>> 2. IF checkbox from #1 is enabled, don't display the login screen at 
>>> all!  Just skip it and login instantly, like skype, etc.  So a 
>>> recurring user with the same account (most of them) gets the nice new 
>>> benefit of a faster login.
>>>
>>> 3.  Add a "logout and login as new user or on a different grid" menu 
>>> option to file menu.  If you choose this option you logout and 
>>> restart the client and get the screen in cypren's prototype.
>>>
>>> Thoughts?
>>>       
>> I don't like this idea at all. It seems terribly convoluted and 
>> complex and certainly doesn't simplify anything... it makes things 
>> more complex. I need to be able to open SL and log in as Argent 
>> Stonecutter or Argent David or Argent Silversten without logging in 
>> with no password, then logging out again. I'd much rather change 
>> nothing. After all, when I'm testing permissions or multi-user objects 
>> I'm building I need to log in as two of me at once, not log out and 
>> log in as someone else.
>>     
> Wait - isn't this a case where the needs of the many outweigh the needs 
> of the one?  Probably >90% SL users only login as one account name, 
> right?  If we make the client auto-login for those users, we've 
> delivered a huge savings in terms of login time across all users, 
> right?   Argent, how about if we added a prefs option (defaulted off) 
> "Always show login screen on startup"?  That would make it no problem 
> for the people who like you describe will need to login as multiple 
> different people all the time. 
>
> Philip

I like where this is going though I worry about loading up an already 
untested user interaction with more features, not to mention asking poor 
Cypren with more requirements. I therefore suggest that we do this in 
two stages. Since everyone seems to like Cypren's design for at least 
the advanced case, I propose that we let him finish what he intended and 
let people get used to actually using it. With that in hand and assuming 
that everyone really does like it, we then design the "instant login" 
functionality on top of that and someone (not neccecarraly Cypren) 
implements it. Does that sound like a good idea?

Regarding instant log-in, I'll throw out this strawman design: replace 
the "General > Show Start Location on Login Screen" check box with 
simply "General > Show Login Screen" which when shown will always show 
the start location control. (What's the point of showing and hiding that 
one control when we're talking about showing and hiding the entire login 
panel, right?) Bootstraping this for brand new users will require one 
bit magic however which will be the ability to cache their user name and 
hashed password in a cookie when creating a new account. The goal is to 
be able to create an account & password and then fire up the viewer with 
instant login. That way 90% of users will never see a login screen! Of 
course somewhere along the line they'll need to be warned about cached 
passwords on insecure machines. They could even be given the option 
during account registration for us to not do that which would simply 
result in the full login screen being shown.

-Melinda