Default change password UX: area for improvements

[Federico Capoano]

Hey everyone,

Given the following text in the user change page:

Raw passwords are not stored, so there is no way to see this user’s password, but you can change the password using this form.

Linking the change user password form using the word "this form" is on the same level of links with "click here", which is notoriously bad UX and I believe the django community is made of a lot of experts so there shouldn't be the need to explain this here.

However, we can do better than just changing the link form, wouldn't it be possible to add a link styled as a button?

Eg:

Raw passwords are not stored, so there is no way to see this user’s password, but the password can be changed.

<button>Change the password</button>

BTW, this idea came from this issue: https://github.com/openwisp/openwisp-radius/issues/265.

We can easily fix it in our django app but I thought it may be good to raise this here so we may fix it at the root instead.

Best regards

Federico Capoano

[Markus Holtermann]

Hi Federico,

this is a good idea. Could you check if there's a ticket about this on https://code.djangoproject.com/ already, and if not, possibly open one. That would be much appreciated. Thank you!

Cheers,

Markus

On Mon, Jun 7, 2021, at 11:12 PM, Federico Capoano wrote:
> Hey everyone,
>
> Given the following text in the user change page:
>

> *Raw passwords are not stored, so there is no way to see this user’s
> password, but you can change the password using this form.*
> *
> *

> Linking the change user password form using the word "this form" is on
> the same level of links with "click here", which is notoriously bad UX
> and I believe the django community is made of a lot of experts so there
> shouldn't be the need to explain this here.
>
> However, we can do better than just changing the link form, wouldn't it
> be possible to add a link styled as a button?
>
> Eg:
>
> Raw passwords are not stored, so there is no way to see this user’s
> password, but the password can be changed.
>

> <button>*Change the password*</button>

>
> BTW, this idea came from this issue:
> https://github.com/openwisp/openwisp-radius/issues/265.
> We can easily fix it in our django app but I thought it may be good to
> raise this here so we may fix it at the root instead.
>
> Best regards
> Federico Capoano
>

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[Thibaud Colas]

Good idea! I think it’s worth mentioning as well the current link’s styles wouldn’t pass accessibility guidelines, as there isn’t enough contrast between the link color and surrounding text color, and the choice of words doesn’t make the link very identifiable either.

This would need to remain an `<a>` tag so it has the best possible semantics – I think styling this like a button would make this as easily identifiable as possible, but from the perspective of the accessibility issues it would be enough to add an underline to the link style and make sure the link text makes sense without context.

Cheers,

Thibaud