"Resume Editing" system should be replaced with automatic versioning
You know, I really appreciate the care and thought that have gone into the 1Password editing system (as with most things 1Password), and the way that Resume Editing currently works. The goal seems to be to allow editing without lots of intrusive "really leave this page?" dialogs and without surprising autosaves that leave cards in an inconsistent state.
Nevertheless, I think the system is kind of broken. The staff responses here seem to suggest that AgileBits has been considering some ways to patch the system by, e.g., providing easy access to partially edited catalog entries. But I would really prefer to see the whole system rethought.
The current system doesn't really follow the principle of least suprise, in that you change things, and yet they don't really change until you do the magic Resume Editing and Save dance that is unique to 1Password. Nothing else on OS X behaves this way.
Wouldn't it make more sense to just have a general concept of card versions? You could then allow partial edits and autosave them, since you could always refer back to the previous version of a card if need be.
This would kill two birds with one stone in that you'd no longer need a special system for, e.g., keeping track of previous passwords. And the UI wouldn't have to be complicated or take explicit account of versions. You'd just have access to "previous values for this field" everywhere, not just for passwords.
1Password Version: 5.4
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: OS X 10.11.1 beta 3
Sync Type: Dropbox
Comments
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Hi @GSnyder,
Thank you very much for taking the time to send us your suggestions & feedback!
I wonder if you could elaborate a bit on the problems you're running into with the current "Resume Editing" system? I'm having a little trouble picturing the sort of issues you're describing. Perhaps it would help if you could give some examples of how this has affected you in your normal workflow? That may help me understand exactly what you mean. Also, you mentioned this:
The staff responses here seem to suggest that AgileBits has been considering some ways to patch the system by, e.g., providing easy access to partially edited catalog entries.
I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to. Would it be possible to provide links to any posts we've made about that? If so, we should be able to comment on that. Thanks! :)
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OK, forum history first...
The common complaint seems to be that cards (by which I mean "top-level database entries of whatever type" generically, sorry if this isn't the right term) get lost in the "being edited" state. Users think they've made changes, but in fact they haven't, because they haven't fully completed the process by clicking Save. You can see other mentions of this problem here, here, here, and here.
There's a different issues related to the Resume Editing state described here.
All of this has led to multiple requests for "ways to get back to partially edited cards". For example, here, here, here, here, here, and here. ALL of those suggestions have staff responses that seem to acknowledge the problem.
As far as my personal history with this, it's mostly nothing out of the ordinary. I know how the editing system is supposed to work, but it's easy to get distracted in the middle of an edit. Then you end up going back to 1Password for some other reason, usually to look up a different card, and 1Password silently sits on your edits, giving no reminder that the changes were unsaved. I've been through the cycle enough times that I now think, aha, I probably didn't save those edits, but it takes a while to get to that point.
Another case that's more recent and a bit different, and which sparked this thread: I have multiple Dreamhost accounts and had been in the habit of creating 1Password cards not only for the Dreamhost control panel, but also for individual Linux logins on the Dreamhost servers. (Part of my general rule that all passwords should be recorded in 1Password.) But I ended up with 15+ different Dreamhost cards, which was unworkable. So I decided that I would consolidate the Linux account information into a single 1Password card for each paid Dreamhost account. In other words, the main information in the card would be to log in to the admin panel at panel.dreamhost.com, and the Linux accounts would just be generic label/value pairs within that card.
Step 1 was to identify and rename the cards that were going to act as the "masters". Then I went through the other cards and manually transferred their information to one of the masters. But it was kind of a confusing process, because the 1Password list doesn't actually update the names until the data is saved. So at each step, I was thinking "OK, this account is going onto the card that WILL be named Dreamhost - Personal, but is currently named XXX". Of course, I could just have resaved the master cards in the middle of the process to make this issue go away, but it got me to thinking about how many times I've had suboptimal experiences with the Resume Editing system.
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Thanks @GSnyder! I see what you mean now, and you make some excellent points. Personally, I would also really like to see improvements to that, as I occasionally come across items in my vault that have the Resume Editing button, and it would be great to have an easy way to find all items with unsaved changes. And in your case I can definitely see why it would help to be able to see the unsaved changes before clicking Resume Editing, especially when you need to click back and forth between multiple items.
I'll gladly add your comments to our internal tracker to let our developers know. I can't make any promised about if/when this will be changed, but I know many of us here would also like to see the same improvements. Thank you so much for taking the time to write out your thoughts about that, and especially for finding the other threads with similar comments!
If you need anything else, please don't hesitate to let us know. :)
ref: OPM-1661
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I would like to add my support here - Resume Editing needs some kind of fix.
Like GSnyder, I am well aware of the unique editing system in 1PW. Yet recently it bit me.
- I set up security questions with a bank and forgot to press save the edited entry in 1PW.
- Later, on another computer, they were not visible in 1PW.
- Thinking they were lost, I called the bank to reset my account.
If this sort of thing can happen to a power-user who understands the system, imagine what happens to grandma.
I think even a "quick find" for unsaved items is more of a workaround than a solution.
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Greetings @Chris100,
I've added your comments and will ensure they are seen by the developers.
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I'll chime in on this, since months have gone by and no sign of a revision or fix.
I'll start by saying I live and die by 1Password. But I am also inclined to kill by it, as well.
Here's an example:
I leave 1Password running on one of three monitors as I spend hours working at the desk. I'm a web developer, so logging into and out of FTP, online accounts, online payments systems, forums, wordpress back-ends, etc is a constant part of my day. I might access 20 to 30 1Password secure notes or logins. Sometimes they need to be updated, sometimes just the formatting can be retyped to make it cleaner and easier to read... whatever.
Several problems come up -
When I go to QUIT 1Password, I should be notified right there and then that every item that is in the Edit state is so and needs to be saved. The alternative is for me to hand-scroll through coming up on 250 items!
If I do mistakenly log out and later open up the file on another device, I might miss the "Resume Editing" button and mistakenly think that an old password is the current one. This just happened on our medical insurance site, and after three attempts, the website locked me out, necessitating a 1-800 call to customer service. It took me almost 20 minutes to reach someone (this being the 2nd to last week of the year, medical insurance customer service lines are completely overwhelmed), then another 10 minutes on the phone to straighten this out. This is your software's inefficient design costing me half an hour of my professional time. NOT OK.
If I do mistakenly close out of one unsaved note, then re-open the note elsewhere and make a change, 1Password's new method of resolving this is to create a 2nd, "semi-identical" note, same title, same everything. This is only a marginal improvement over your old method of duplicating the content and separating it by "===".
Your software needs:
A universal "wait - you have items still open and unsaved named: X, Y, and Z" that precedes any quit
A versioning system, date-stamped, to resolve database conflicts - same as every other database system works.
I use 1Password extensively, and have almost 50,000 items stored in it. BUT, I can't wholeheartedly recommend it, especially to clients who can barely manage to answer an email, until I'm confident you've figured out ways to idiot-proof the user experience. (Yes, I did just refer to myself as an idiot).
Thanks
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Thanks for following up on this, @jeffseaver! First of all, thank you for your kind words about 1Password. There is always room for improvement, though, and I agree this would be a great thing to see improved in the future. At the moment we're firing on all cylinders with 1Password for Teams, but perhaps this issue might dovetail nicely with the work the devs are doing there.
I'd like to address each of your points specifically, so I don't skip any.
When I go to QUIT 1Password, I should be notified right there and then that every item that is in the Edit state is so and needs to be saved. The alternative is for me to hand-scroll through coming up on 250 items!
It took me a second to parse the word you put in all caps correctly. Just to be clear, you think it would be better if the behavior when you explicitly quit the app was different than when the app locked itself based on your auto-lock settings (Preferences > Security)? If not, and you think that it would be more confusing to have two different behaviors, we may need to come up with a different solution there.
If a prompt to save changes prevents 1Password from automatically locking, that would clearly be a security issue. If it doesn't prevent auto-lock, then, well, that's the system we currently have in place, so we're back where we started from. I think the solution is probably closer to versioning with autosave than adding more prompts.
If I do mistakenly log out and later open up the file on another device, I might miss the "Resume Editing" button and mistakenly think that an old password is the current one. This just happened on our medical insurance site, and after three attempts, the website locked me out, necessitating a 1-800 call to customer service. It took me almost 20 minutes to reach someone (this being the 2nd to last week of the year, medical insurance customer service lines are completely overwhelmed), then another 10 minutes on the phone to straighten this out. This is your software's inefficient design costing me half an hour of my professional time. NOT OK.
That does sound frustrating. I'm really sorry that happened. And the timing of it could hardly be worse. I agree that something can be done to improve this. In the meantime, it may help to check the item after a single failed login attempt. I know you know this. I only mention it for the sake of others who may also be following this thread. If we can prevent this from happening to even one other person that would be great. Again, I'm trying to work within the system currently in place (since that's all we have at the moment). I've made a note of this for the developers.
If I do mistakenly close out of one unsaved note, then re-open the note elsewhere and make a change, 1Password's new method of resolving this is to create a 2nd, "semi-identical" note, same title, same everything. This is only a marginal improvement over your old method of duplicating the content and separating it by "===".
This is a hard problem to solve without versioning. That seems to be a running theme. ;)
You're clearly not an idiot, and I really appreciate you taking the time to not only offer up some suggestions but also provide concrete examples of the pain points you are experiencing. I've passed this along to the devs for further consideration. I'm advocating for you!
ref: OPM-3551, OPM-16610 -
It took me a second to parse the word you put in all caps correctly. Just to be clear, you think it would be better if the behavior when you explicitly quit the app was different than when the app locked itself based on your auto-lock settings (Preferences > Security)? If not, and you think that it would be more confusing to have two different behaviors, we may need to come up with a different solution there.
If a prompt to save changes prevents 1Password from automatically locking, that would clearly be a security issue. If it doesn't prevent auto-lock, then, well, that's the system we currently have in place, so we're back where we started from. I think the solution is probably closer to versioning with autosave than adding more prompts.
OK, then - I get that. How about:
Add a selection in Security Audit that says "Unsaved Edits" - with an item count available - and just show me the list?
Make the "Resume Editing" button a BIG (RED) BUTTON at the top, not a subtle little text message lower right?As someone who designs and builds apps, I'm (sadly) aware of the nightmares that come up with what appears to the outsider (often, the client) to be a simple matter. If it were simple, we'd have solved it.
I do appreciate your attentiveness to this, but I have to say, it is frustrating to see the message boards filled with concerns and iteration after iteration going by with what appears to me to be a very serious security matter unresolved.
To illustrate my point, no sooner had I signed off when a partner called me for an audit of the what logins our clients had provided for a number of platforms. I opened up their note, saw that both their FTP and their Constant Contact login were missing, and told him so. (I handle between 40 and 50 projects at a time). He then wrote a rather heated email to the client, saying that we could not be expected to spend hours and hours of our retainered time trying to extricate logins from his team before we can do the work.
He cc'd me on it, and I re-opened 1Password and saw the small "Resume Editing" button. I clicked the button, and lo and behold, two of the client's team HAD emailed me the needed logins on Friday, I quickly typed them into 1P and went about my business and left the app open. This led to three separate apology emails I had to write in embarrassment.
Keep in mind, 1Password's window is kept out of the way on the right-hand display of an array of three 27" monitors I have arc'd out in front of me - with sometimes dozens of major software apps open at one time.
Thanks
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Add a selection in Security Audit that says "Unsaved Edits" - with an item count available - and just show me the list?
Make the "Resume Editing" button a BIG (RED) BUTTON at the top, not a subtle little text message lower right?These are great suggestions! Thanks, @jeffseaver!
To illustrate my point, no sooner had I signed off when a partner called me for an audit of the what logins our clients had provided for a number of platforms. I opened up their note, saw that both their FTP and their Constant Contact login were missing, and told him so. (I handle between 40 and 50 projects at a time). He then wrote a rather heated email to the client, saying that we could not be expected to spend hours and hours of our retainered time trying to extricate logins from his team before we can do the work.
It sounds like you might greatly benefit from 1Password for Teams for a variety of reasons, not least of which is because it has versioning for items (thought it is not currently exposed in the UI). We're making progress on this issue. We just don't normally discuss future plans or promise release dates, since many factors (some beyond our control) can affect them. As a developer, I'm sure you can relate. :) However, I assure you this is being taken seriously.
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