#781 Virtual Keyboard User Interface - Major Improvements with Little to No Effort -

[Aaron Swartz are we all]

First of all, thanks for this amazing piece of software. As a matter of useful feedback, may I suggest some minor improvements that will make a huge impact both security-wise and in ease of use?

All these are UI modifications to the Virtual Keyboard. (Common to all KB types and language distributions)

1.- This is extremely important
Please add one more Boolean check box: This way the final choice is left to the user, according to particular preference and threat model analysis e.g. Shoulder surfing, acoustic analysis, etc.
Just below the 'Remember this KB' option add the following:

'Play Sound on Key Press'

A 'Ding' or "bell sound" when a valid key is detected as pressed (with its corresponding lime light as currently shows), and a 'buzzer sound' or 'warning sound' when no valid key was selected. In those cases (where the click was in between keys i.e. KB background) it would be really important to show a light red or pink colour on the entire KB background. (That visual aid is really useful not only for deaf users but for everybody else as well).

2.- 'Randomize' button placement: lowering that button so that its placed below the 'Clear Buffer' button. This is to avoid clicking on it unintentionally when entering a pass-phrase that contains one or several <blank> characters. The main idea is to place every non printable character button far enough so as to not click on any of them in the middle of a password/pass-phrase entry.

3.- Make the Virtual Keyboard window diagonally resizeable: keeping locked the KB aspect ratio but having the ability to expand/reduce the KB size (and key fonts size proportionally) is paramount not only to those visually challenged but to adapt to every desktop zoom and monitor resolution. Simply put, just the option to make the virtual KB bigger than the default size, without affecting the aspect ratio. As it shows in the current version, it's really small, not so easy to read and fixed in size.

4.- Add 'Space Bar' legend to the space bar. So that one can clearly see when it's been selected correctly, just like every other key currently shows.

These are my two cents, in the hopes of making a great program even better. I look forward to seeing these changes in a future release. I'm confident it'll help a lot of users.

[DrK]

As the original author of this bit of code on the Windows MFC version, I agree that 3 of the requested items are fairly easy to implement at first sight (I haven't looked at this code for years).

The one item that is very very non-trivial is making the "Virtual Keyboard window diagonally resizeable". Again, I haven't looked at resizeable windows for a while but my recollection is that every button, checkbox etc has to be adjusted both in size and position individually as the window size changes. Including buttons, checkboxes, comboboxes and text fields - this is over 80 objects.

David

[Aaron Swartz are we all]

Thanks a lot man for your quick reply. Please disregard any point that's too much trouble. Just adding the "Space Bar" legend to the space bar would make a huge difference for everyone who (like me) uses a long pass-phrase. Anyway, thanks again and I hope everything that's quick&easy can be added over time. No rush whatsoever.

[DrK]

Hi Aaron, I sent you an email about this FR from my SF account to yours. I'm not sure if you permit this. If you could look at it, I would be grateful.

David

[Aaron Swartz are we all]

Hey man, sorry for the delay, I'm not frequently checking this account lately. I could not find your email, not even in the spam folder. Maybe it got blocked at the server level? IDK.

Please resend it if you can. Glad to help and give useful feedback if I can.

High 5

---

On Wed, 6/17/15, DrK c-273@users.sf.net wrote:

Subject: [passwordsafe:feature-requests] #781 Virtual Keyboard User Interface - Major Improvements with Little to No Effort -
To: "[passwordsafe:feature-requests]" 781@feature-requests.passwordsafe.p.re.sf.net
Date: Wednesday, June 17, 2015, 12:51 PM

Hi Aaron, I sent
you an email about this FR from my SF account to yours.
I'm not sure if you permit this. If you could look at
it, I would be grateful.
David

[feature-requests:#781]
Virtual Keyboard User Interface - Major Improvements with
Little to No Effort -
Status: open

Group: Next_Release_(example)

Labels: Virtual Keyboard Keyboard Security
High Entropy Passphrase Visual Aid Acoustic Aid Threat Model
Analysis

Created: Mon Jun 01, 2015 04:22 PM UTC by
Aaron Swartz are we all

Last Updated: Sat Jun 06, 2015 12:24 PM
UTC

Owner: nobody
First of all, thanks for this amazing piece of software.
As a matter of useful feedback, may I suggest some minor
improvements that will make a huge impact both security-wise
and in ease of use?
All these are UI modifications to the Virtual Keyboard.
(Common to all KB types and language distributions)
1.- This is extremely important

Please add one more Boolean check box: This way the final
choice is left to the user, according to particular
preference and threat model analysis e.g. Shoulder surfing,
acoustic analysis, etc.

Just below the 'Remember this KB' option add the
following:
'Play Sound on Key Press'
A 'Ding' or "bell sound" when a valid
key is detected as pressed (with its corresponding lime
light as currently shows), and a 'buzzer sound' or
'warning sound' when no valid key was selected. In
those cases (where the click was in between keys i.e. KB
background) it would be really important to show a light red
or pink colour on the entire KB background. (That visual aid
is really useful not only for deaf users but for everybody
else as well).
2.- 'Randomize' button placement: lowering that
button so that its placed below the 'Clear Buffer'
button. This is to avoid clicking on it unintentionally when
entering a pass-phrase that contains one or several
<blank> characters. The main idea is to place every
non printable character button far enough so as to not click
on any of them in the middle of a password/pass-phrase
entry.
3.- Make the Virtual Keyboard window diagonally
resizeable: keeping locked the KB aspect ratio but having
the ability to expand/reduce the KB size (and key fonts size
proportionally) is paramount not only to those visually
challenged but to adapt to every desktop zoom and monitor
resolution. Simply put, just the option to make the virtual
KB bigger than the default size, without affecting the
aspect ratio. As it shows in the current version, it's
really small, not so easy to read and fixed in size.
4.- Add 'Space Bar' legend to the space bar. So
that one can clearly see when it's been selected
correctly, just like every other key currently shows.
These are my two cents, in the hopes of making a great
program even better. I look forward to seeing these changes
in a future release. I'm confident it'll help a lot
of users.

Sent from sourceforge.net because you indicated interest
in https://sourceforge.net/p/passwordsafe/feature-requests/781/
To unsubscribe from further messages, please visit https://sourceforge.net/auth/subscriptions/

[DrK]

You probably have not set to allow emails from other SF users in your SF profile.

Anyway, here is the gist of my email:
1. I have currently implemented sound and added the legend to the Space Bar.
2. I have also fixed the incorrectly setting of the special keys (Left & Right Ctrl, Alt and AltGr keys when there are no characters available using them).
3. I have not moved the Randomize button as it would change the appearance for other users.
4. I have not implemented making the Virtual Keyboard window diagonally resizable. Here, I have looked at it and even investigated the new Visual Studio 2015 version, which is currently in Release Candidate status. Microsoft has finally implemented resizable dialogs BUT it really only allows controls to grow/shrink as the dialog grows and shrinks. Unfortunately, it does not have the option to keep controls evenly spaced and so keyboard button overlap each other as the dialog grows. It is possible but I would have to do quite a bit of work to maintain each control's relative spacing as it grows. I have started work on this and have the start of a possible solution but I don't have the resources at this time to complete it - maybe later (but no promises!).

Rony has upload a version that you may wish to test at http://pwsafe.org/tmp/FR781/pwsafe-3.36.1-bin.zip with its signature at http://pwsafe.org/tmp/FR781/pwsafe-3.36.1-bin.zip.sig.

This was built on 17 June 2015 and will have additional fixes since the 3.36 release but has NOT been through the testing normally performed prior to release of a new build, although I do not know of any issues introduced since 3.36. I suggest that you just use it to test these new features - perhaps with a test database.

On last item, you mentioned in the Support Request ( https://sourceforge.net/p/passwordsafe/support-requests/442/ ) that:
Now that I've changed my pass-phrase to one of my dB'ses, I found that with my regular keyboard I'm not able to open it, but it works just fine with the standard virtual KB that the application provides.
I am very intrigued in what can't be entered via your physical keyboard but can be via the Virtual Keyboard. I have found something similar whilst answering https://sourceforge.net/p/passwordsafe/discussion/134800/thread/62e51d06/ where I can type in a Chinese character via the Alt key in the Virtual Keyboard but not my UK physical one.

David