The Law of Diminishing Returns!

jhk

Lately, I've found that 1Password's previous uncanny ability to recognise sites or log-in pages has deteriorated. The original log-in page's web address may have changed (often subtly, but maybe more so), but older versions of 1Password never seemed to be fazed by this. Sites I may have set up logins for as long ago as 2010 could still be easily distinguished. Not so much now. Recently, I have had to edit several logins, which were not detected at all by v6.8. Once the very latest addresses were put in, then things were OK. Maybe it's just me, but the addition of so many extra, but often minor, "improvements" to 1Password have created a sort of bloatware effect, with loads more bugs. Somehow, the old iterations were just simpler and more reliable. I would venture that, similarly to the old Microsoft legend that 90% of users didn't use 90% of Office's capabilities (or something like that!), the vast majority of 1Password users simply want a program that makes and stores passwords, and allows them to log-in to their chosen website account.......... I fully appreciate the efforts required to maintain functionality in updated or changed operating systems and browsers, and across the different devices, but I do wonder about things when it gets to be a hassle using the one thing I really bought the program for. Or, is it just me being an old f--t? :'(

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1Password Version: 6.8
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: OS X 10.12.6
Sync Type: Not Provided

littlebobbytables

It's definitely you being an old f--t @jhk :lol: I'm kidding of course and I hope my humour isn't in bad taste but I couldn't resist.

Now I have a sometimes awful memory and I never did use the old 1Password 3 extension because I was a hardcore Opera fan (pre v15 when it wasn't just based on Chromium). I made my choices and was limited to copy and paste. I only say this so that if I say anything that doesn't match your memories it's probably me in the wrong.

Given you're a long time user you're probably well versed with filling the already open page using the likes of ⌘\ versus open and fill. With filling the currently open page all that 1Password should care about is that the registered domain matches in terms of allowing a particular Login item to be used. For open and fill we pass the entire URL to the browser so if the URL no longer leads to the same page for any reason I would expect there to be failures. Now I wouldn't have thought older versions of 1Password would have fared any better here though as either a URL leads to the right page or it doesn't with basically zero tolerance for deviations.

What I also wouldn't expect, would be very surprised to learn is if you're saying that you're visiting a login page for a known site but the likes of ⌘\ won't work until you update the stored URL unless the domain of the new URL is different from the one currently stored. An example would be if a site has moved from previously using the likes of foo.com to new-foo.com.

While 1Password does include new features, things like multiple vaults or the ability to store TOTP codes we haven't forgotten that at the heart of 1Password that if we don't fill pages then people aren't going to use 1Password. Continued compatibility is a big task. We have to ensure we keep up with browser specific changes (just so the extension works at all) and with whatever HTML or JavaScript may be thrown our way through a mind boggling number of page designs. Some sites are nice and some are just downright hostile. We do try our best and there are some changes in how we fill that I'm proud to have been instrumental in. My hope is I get to make more like this in the future too.

It may be I've misunderstood what you were trying to communicate and if that's the case please do correct me. It may also be we can learn from a more concrete example if you were happy to provide one and we'll see what can be explained or improved :smile:

jhk

@littlebobbytables It takes a lot to offend me :-) Your humour is just fine. I've been an Opera fan since its early Windows days, and I found 1P worked fine with it when I started on Macs, and bought my first licence from you.
I've read your comments, and I take all the points. I was just getting a little irritated when some sites required some editing. The most recent (which I remember easily!) was the photography site, dpreview. The extension and "mini" both completely failed to recognise that I wanted to log in. No sign of dpreview as an option. Yes, the page was different from 2010, but dpreview was still in the line, and this had never happened to me before. There are still some instances where I have to copy and paste passwords, but I agree that it must be impossible to cover all the bases.
Anyway, I'm still a loyal customer! It's probably because I'm not in the first flush of youth that I don't get quite as excited about some of the newer features as I otherwise might. You may have noticed that I have found the odd bug, and my questions in the forums have a vague semblance of intelligence :)
Take care, and enjoy the rest of the weekend!

littlebobbytables

Hello @jhk,

If you're happy to can we work with the dpreview example a bit more please. So you had an existing Login item for this site, possibly created some time ago. It contained the typical details like username and password and it did have a visible website field that stored a URL where the registered domain was dpreview.com. Despite that, when you visited the login page for this site, which currently seems to be located at login.dpreview.com 1Password would not offer your existing Login item as a match. When you edited the Login item and made what appeared to be a minor update to the website field 1Password would then correctly display this Login item as a match for the site and when instructed to fill everything worked normally.

Does this sound like an accurate interpretation and this has happened with multiple Login items? I don't know the cause but if that is all correct that is certainly not good behaviour and 1Password should be offering those Login items without the need for this minor editing.

jhk

@littlebobbytables Yes, that's correct. Another similar one was the X-Plane.org store, which had also changed from its original address, but had not proved to be a problem till just now.

jhk

@littlebobbytables Another one: Trying to login to Opentable.com (US). No problem logging in to Opentable.co.uk, which is what the password was set in, but no recognition at all if I tried to log into the US address (which I also use). Easily corrected by adding the US web address to the login, so it would see both. Still, I thought it a bit strange......

littlebobbytables

Hi @jhk,

So the very last one I can explain and it is 1Password working as intended. With only two exceptions that I'm aware of, ones we've deliberately added to 1Password after extensive testing, we never treat to registered domains as the same when the TLD (Top-Level Domain) differs like it does here. A number of entities will register the same domain over a range of TLDs but there's no guarantee so we don't take the risk. The two exceptions? Amazon and eBay as a single account will work at the various TLDs they've registered and we've tested this. So outside these two, if you ever need a Login item to work over both .com and .co.uk or .de etc. it would require manually adding the second (or more) domain(s). I would be surprised if even the likes of 1Password 3 for Mac would have handled this any differently because each registrar is separate and there is no guarantee the two sites are the same and owned by one entity.

I'm interested in the x-plane.org one. How did the URL change, was it just the path and like before 1Password wasn't displaying the Login item as a match while on x-plane.org until the edit?

If you find another site then if you're willing I'd like to learn more. Instead of altering the existing item can you duplicate it please (an option in the Item menu in 1Password for Mac) and alter the name sufficiently so it stands out as the duplicate.

1. With no further adjustments does the duplicate item display as a matching Login item?
2. If you adjust the stored URL does the duplicate item display as a matched Login item while the original still doesn't?

Hopefully we get a bit closer to understanding the weird behaviour you've been observing.

jhk

@littlebobbytables Thanks for the explanation, and I can see that it makes sense. I'll have to see whether I can find the old X-Plane store URL, but I remember it had something like "3Dcardstores" in it.

jxpx777

@jhk If the website address changes dramatically from one domain to a totally different domain, then 1Password will not know about this change and as such won't offer to fill on that new domain. This is part of 1Password's phishing protection.

Let's say you have a login for example.com. You click on the website in 1Password to use open and fill for this site. This works for a long time. Then, the site changes to myexample.com and has a redirect so that if you visit example.com/login it will take you to myexample.com/login. The form looks the same and everything but to 1Password, this basically looks like someone is trying to pretend to be example.com, so it refuses to fill in your username and password out of an abundance of caution.

If you change the website in 1Password to match myexample.com (or simply add it as another URL for the same site) then 1Password should happily resume filling for you. It sounds like this might be what happened for you with the X-Plane site. One way you can check if this looks to be the case is if you visit the page manually and click the 1Password button in the toolbar. If it recognizes the site as matching one in your vault, it should show those matching Logins first.

Does that make sense? Let us know if you have any other problems or questions. We're always here to help.

--
Jamie Phelps
Code Wrangler @ AgileBits
Fort Worth, Texas

jhk

@jxpx777 Thank you Jamie. I think that probably covers it all. I will watch out for any other possible glitches and, if I get any, I'll then do what @littlebobbytables suggests above.

littlebobbytables

Sounds like a plan :smile: Keep us updated if you find any where there isn't a big change to the registered domain to explain what you're seeing.