[umbrae]

Hey guys, I'm the author of HalfMask - please let me know if you have any feedback, or you can check out the source on google code: http://code.google.com/p/halfmask/

Forking to try new things is heartily encouraged - I'd like to see new approaches to password masking.

[cliffdickerson]

I typed a password, It "stood out" so I had my wife see if she could read it and she couldn't. I had her type a password and I could read it no problem. once she had typed it she could read mine no problem as well. It seems once you've "seen it" it stands out. Sorry, maybe I missed something?

Still cool JS trickery none the less.

[bcl]

The masking characters need to be more similar to the characters being typed. eg. ll is easily readable with letters like nrs, etc. in the background.

[umbrae]

This is a good thought - I had implemented character set matching (uppers to uppers, numbers, etc) before, but I worried that it made it almost too hard to read for the user.

You'll notice that I'm only using lowercase letters currently - that was an intentional choice as it seemed too obscured when using a fuller character set.

I'll give this another look though and see if there may be a good middle ground.

[jf]

I agree, it's pretty easy to read the text if you zoom in on the field: http://skitch.com/joelf/bayjs/halfmask

[Skeuomorph]

Usability folks at Apple already thought this problem through and came up with the compromise seen on the iPhone.

jQuery implementation here: http://blog.decaf.de/2009/07/iphone-like-password-fields-usi...

[sirrocco]

If you select the text the password is clearly visible. Plus the letters I type are slimmer than the mask so I can still see the password.

I say : just mask the bloody password the old fashioned way :)