GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 300714
Improve host sorting of passwords
Last modified: 2015-09-30 02:00:14 UTC
When the personal data manager is used to remember many passwords and cookies, it becomes very difficult to locate a single item from the list, due to at least two problems outlined below. Problem #1: the the list is sorted by default by the hostname part of the Host column, but the data shown in the column is something else (apparently including http:// or https:// for stored web form passwords). This makes the sorting non-obvious, and breaks the GTK 2.6 built-in keyboard search which considers the data as shown in the list, not what was used to sort). Problem #2: related to above, the variable -length leading part in the host name before the sorting key makes it extremely difficult to visually scan the list for the item you're looking for, as sometimes it's in column 0, sometimes somewhere else. Problem #2: Passwords are commonly valid for a domain, but the lists sorting includes the hostname. Some sites perform authenication to a separate server, and the location of the password in the list becomes entirely unknown. For example: the Lufthansa frequent flyer site is https://portal.miles-and-more.com, but the authentication is made to https://aero.miles-and-more.com. These appear far away from each other in the list, and there is no way to search for miles-and-more. My suggestion would be to remove the protocol part entirely (I don't se why it should be relevant to a user whether the authentication method used is HTTP Basic, Digest, or a form-based login), sub-divide the Host column to host- and domain-part, and apply sorting and searching to the domain part only. Something like: | Host | User Name | | www .freshmeat.net | foobar | | bugzilla .gnome.org | foobar | | mail .gnome.org | foobar | | www .slashdot.org | foobar | ^^^^^^^^^^ this is what you sort and search by
Agreed, if the protocol part is relevant at all it should be indicated in another way, it should not affect sorting.
I may have been a bit unclear in my report, the protocol part does not affect sorting now either, but it does make the list difficult to read. I'm suggesting that the first hostname part should not be the primary sorting field either, to group the entries for one domain together.
This is solved for the cookies view; I didn't fix it for the passwords view since it's going to disappear altogether.
Mass changing target 2.16 -> 2.18
Moving to 2.20 target due to feature and UI freeze for 2.18.
Moving Severity:enhancement bugs off of 2.20 target.
Christian, I fear I don't understand what you called “it's going to disappear altogether”. Is that to say that you were about to apply the same kind of patch for the passwords, but that you didn't (yet)? In which case, I could have a look at implementing this.
OK, I just read #307893… Anyway, should I consider producing a patch for this, or is gnome-keyring support ready?
The keyring support isn't ready. So I guess it makes sense to apply the same sorting as the cookie hosts to the password hosts too.
*** Bug 503847 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 541044 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Seems similar to Bug 157414... So, same question: was this obsoleted by the new Password panel and the filter/search in it?
Yup, we expect people to find passwords with the search feature.