Suggestion: Better feedback for grayed-out icon in browser toolbar
Hello, I hope this is the right place to make a suggestion for 1Password!
I just had to troubleshoot an issue with 1Password on my mom's computer. Normally, it's been working great for her — kudos for making it easy to use! — but today she asked for help because the icon was greyed out in Firefox, and she wasn't able to easily log in to her various websites as usual.
It took a while for me to figure out what was wrong: I think the extension and the application were out of sync. She told me that she'd been prompted to update 1Password, but declined because she was busy doing something else on the computer. Firefox is configured to auto-update its extensions. After updating 1Password and restarting Firefox, everything seemed to work again.
If it's possible, I think it'd be really helpful to have a tooltip or other way of determining why the extension might not be available. (In this situation, the tooltip just said, "1Password".) Also, right-clicking on the greyed-out icon popped up a context menu, but none of the items seemed to actually work, which made things more confusing. A little bit of more consistent and helpful feedback to the user would be helpful in this case.
Anyway, I know that this is a tricky problem, since the browser extension updates aren't directly under your control. Thanks for listening, and thanks for a very valuable product!
1Password Version: 6.x
Extension Version: 4.6.x
OS Version: OS X 10.12
Sync Type: Not Provided
Comments
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@jason_k: Aha! Thanks for reaching out about this. I'm sorry for the trouble there. I'm not sure if there's something we can do, but it's something we'll continue to look into. The trouble is that the 1Password extension doesn't have any way of knowing why it can't connect to the app. And the tooltip just reflects the extension's name in Firefox's interface, like any other button. But if it's any consolation, this was a pretty big change the likes of which 1Password and Firefox probably won't see again for years, so now that 1Password and the extension (and, presumably Firefox) are up to date there there probably won't be any further trouble like this with future updates. But either way, we'll continue to weigh our options and see if we can make 1Password smarter to deal with things going wrong. Thank you for bringing this up! :)
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Hi - Just want to agree with this suggestion. I hunted around all morning to try to figure this out. It would have been great if this fix was more easily searchable.
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Thanks for letting us know! It sounds like you were able to get it working by installing the latest version, but be sure to tell me if you're still having any trouble!
ref: CZI-99592-776
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Although they have fixed their issues, jason's request is still valid. You detailed how it was due to Firefox changes and it is unlikely to happen again but it probably will for a different reason (see the thread in the Mac section regarding the same issue with Chrome also on Aug 8th strangely enough).
If the extension is not able to connect to 1P, instead of just showing a tooltip of the name, show something very user friendly (aka elderly parents friendly) like "Oops, there is a problem with the 1Password extension. Please go here for tips to fix it" which links to a FAQ on your site that lists suggestions like restart your web browser and restart your computer. Perhaps include a section for more advanced troubleshooting if those didn't work like disabling/re-enabling the extension, reinstalling the extension, etc. Only then include a last resort tip of "call your kid and they will walk you through it over the phone" :)
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Hello @Smudge,
You're right and there are current discussions to have 1Password do a better job of informing the user what is happening and why. Some of these improvements will make it into a minor update to 1Password 6.8 and then we'll have to see what else will help too. Given the extension's lack of UI (User Interface) it will be helpful if 1Password lets the user know what is happening.
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An option that I've seen from other extensions that fail for some reason is they are able to spawn a new tab with a web page full of information. That could be one way the extension could notify the user of a problem and suggestions of how to fix it.
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Definitely. It's something we've done in the past, but many people do not like this behaviour. We'll see if there's something we can do to help here.
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