It’s also handy in that keychains are synchronized among all your Macs if you’re a .Mac user.

My opinion on it is that the usability benefit for power users outweighs the security risk for less knowledgeable users. I know this is an elitist attitude, but it seems to me that hand-holding for security purposes is only appropriate when there is no negative usability downside.

In this case, it is clear to me that there is a huge usability gain from the new system (less distracting, cleaner, asks you _after_ seeing if worksthe password), and the only real downside is a potential security problem caused by users being more trusting of sites asking for their info.

Not to change the subject too much, but what are peoples’ thoughts on Safari’s keychain feature? Or is that a Mac thing bigger than just Safari? I had a Mac test box with Safari at my last job and I remember that one of the bugs I encountered was that it was asking if I wanted to save a password after entering a search query into a text input. Go figure!

I’m not saying the current uses of the dialog strip are a concern. The concern is that system messages appear within the browser window at all.

If people become accustomed to system messages within the browser window they will be less able to discriminate against fake system messages. “Hmmm… now the system is asking me to retype my paypal password. Oh well…”

If the system messages are obviously part of the chrome then a faked system message will at least be surprising (and hopefully viewed with suspicion) because of its physical location. “Why is this web-page asking me to enter my paypal password?”

What cases of use of the dialog strip are there that are a security concern? I’ve only seen it used to ask if you want to save a password, which doesn’t make your password less secure that I can think of, and also to notify you about certain types of updates.