Author Direct

[Vince Sorensen]

Please post your suggestions for enhancements here.

Thanks!

[kenjabin]

While perhaps trivial, my suggestion would be to give the toolbar a complete makeover - a fresh new look. The icons on the "buttons" look almost childish - certainly not very professional. You have a very good product - but visually it's not very appealing. I'd take a look at the interface and give it a more up-to-date appeal.

[Charles Firth]

I agree with kenjabin. But I do not think his suggestion is trivial.

First, let me say that this product is what I consider to be a core application for me. It is the console from which I start all of my other important web-based and disk-based apps. It provides the security that Windows should, but does not.

Not only that, but I use it to document each app and to store important personal information such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, account numbers, etc.

I run my business from my laptop. If I croaked, my wife would need to know what apps to access, passwords, etc. to run the business in my absence. I have used Passwords Max as the virtual version of my dad's old "briefcase" (which contains all his "important" documents).

I have documented each app in the Notes section.

But even though the interface for PM is simpler than other password vault type programs I have looked at, it is too crude. The notes do not appear nicely formated (ASCII codes show up as garbage) and to a novice (like my wife), it would be a little confusing. I am going to document some suggestions in a followup post.

[Charles Firth]

1) Make it look better. Get a graphic designer to clean it up visually with better colors, maybe more of a Vista look and feel. Don't over do it. Keep it simple, but give it a cleaner look and give users the ability to customize. Maybe even skins would be nice.

Note: I do not suggest that the program should be designed so that any simpleton can set it up, but once set up, it should be designed so that any simpleton can use it!

2) Provide some formatting capabilities for the Notes area, so that Notes can be used to document each app in a more meaningful way. In other words, the text in the notes column should appear WYSIWYG with bolding, italics, choice of font, and proper paragraph breaks. Maybe even active hyperlinks would be nice. Note: right now, it appears that list properties could include font and some other things, but it is all greyed out except for color.

3) Make it possible to remove (uncheck) the tool bar (graphical) buttons. Does anyone ever use the buttons at the top? They look crappy as is, but I would just like to turn them off. Right click on the blue bar, uncheck "icons" box. That is what I would do.

4) The most important button/function on the screen is START. Rather than having to highlight the app, and then click on start, I think there should be more a direct way of starting the app.

Right now, if I double click on the app (Description, for example), it takes me to "Change." An option should be to enable a single click to START the app. But a novice needs a way to know this. I suggest that you enable the equivalent of another list column that would simply be a green start button for each app. Then, my wife will know, "I click here to start this".

For example, I have set my list area to show just "Description" and "Notes" I would like to see: 1) start buton, then 2) Description (which I should be able to rename to something like "Program" or "Application" and 3) Notes (which I should be able to rename to "Description.") In this way I show: a) what it is, b) what it's for and c) how to start it ALL ON ONE LINE.

5) I would make the rest of the bottom buttons (Wizzard, Copy, Change, etc.) optional. I should be able to make those go away if I want, or to repositon them to the menu bar (next to file, edit, etc.) or whatever. I don't want a user messing with those if I have set up each app for monitoring and auto send. I would also make the bottom line with the clipboard box optional (turn off or on).

6) I would make the "tabs" customizable. I display just Description and Notes in the list area. Why do I need tabs for Expiry or Name? And where is a tab for Notes? I should be able to sort on Notes if I want to.
Note: Categories are great! Love those.

7) Copy to clipboard is often essential for those apps where monitoring and auto send is not enabled. But this needs to be labled in a more intuitve fashion. I think I would just create two buttons called Name and Password. A new user will not know what N and P mean. It also might be useful to just make this a Send feature. In other words, If I go to my app and place the cursor in the password field, clicking on the Password (P) button in PM should just send the password to the field I placed the cursor in. Why should I have to use cut and paste? Why not do this behind the scenes like the send button. The Send button tries to do too much by sending both name and password all at once anyway. Simplify this. Seriously, my wife still does not understand what a "clipboard" is.

That is it for now. Passwords Max is a mission critical program for me and has been for YEARS now. I would like to see the interface live (and function) up to this!! Besides, this will give you an edge against some of the other password programs out there. Did you know that McAfee (which I get for free from Comcast) now has a Password Vault. It sucks, but these things could create more competition for you.

[Vince Sorensen]

Thanks gentlemen... I like the ideas you have. I'm waiting patiently for Clarion 7 to get to a point where I can use it, as a number of the UI improvements I have planned need it. Once C7 is out, there will be an overhaul of the UI.

[Charles Firth]

Great Vince. You have a good product here and I would not want to lose it's relative simplicity, nor its stability. But I do I think of it as a security console rather than just a password vault. I launch all of my password protected programs and documents from it. It is the security gateway, or security portal for my home and business.

I wish you great sales with it or that Microsoft buys you out for tens of millions (NOT. They would ruin it.)

I will gladly pay an upgrade fee for the graphical revise. If I think of anything else, I'll throw it out here.

[Charles Firth]

Hey, have you heard? Clarion Version 7 - Native Win32 is available.

[Vince Sorensen]

[aaa29]

I would like to see a version for my Palm.

[Justus]

I suggest several enhancements:

When synchronizing, records deleted on the sending machine are not deleted on the receiving machine. I wish that there were an option during the receive to delete any records on the receiving machine that do not exist.

When synchronizing, record change histories should be accumulated so that changes on either the source of the sync or the destination are combined leaving a complete history of all changes made to the passwords. That way if you sync between two (or more machines) and make changes to passwords on each machine, you have a complete history on all the machines.

I suggest more settable font selection. Not everything needs to be settable, but all places that account and password information is displayed need to be settable so that 1 (one), l (ell), and 0 (zero) and O (oh) etc., can be easily distinguished.

Thank you for continuing to develop a great product.

[kenjabin]

I'm going to echo a previous thought as it relates to synching and records not being deleted. In the same way, it appears that the Description acts as the "key" to the database, which is an irritant beyond measure - for if I tweak a description and then do a sync, instead of reflecting the change in the sync'ed database, I end up with two (2) records - the original and the 'tweaked' one. If I modify an entry, no matter what I change, I expect THAT record to be updated in the sync'ed database, not a whole new entry created.

[Charles Firth]

Greetings... As you are probably aware, many competing password vaults are now integrated into the browser. This approach generally employs a pulldown list with all the password protected web sites selectable from a list with just a click. Even Norton has an integrated security option for this now. it is VERY convenient since I do not have to open a separate app for most of the stuff I do such as banking, etc.

The problem with this approach, is it does not give a good way to back up the password and other data and does not offer a robust management console for keeping track of passwords and it is web-centric. I have other password protected content/apps that are not on the web.

I think Passwords Max should offer a feature that would enable the id and password stored in PM to populate a browser pulldown in one click. In other words, the standalone app would be the "repository" for all security data as it is now, but it could also build a browser-integrated pulldown for easy access to secured web sites such as banking sites, etc.

This would be a true advantage over the competition. All the data would still reside in the PM database which can easily be kept on a backed up data drive. The web-integrated list would just be a copy of what is in the database. If the data in the database changes, then the browser can just be refreshed from there.

This way I can still easily have all my non-internet security data and all my web-based security data in one app, but also populate my browser with a synchronzied copy of the web stuff that would be more convenient to have right there as a pulldown.

It's pretty cool when you think of it. Don't think I have seen anybody doing this.

[Charles Firth]

I just realized it has been two years since the posts about a revised front end. Any progress on this front?

[Vince Sorensen]

Design is complete, and development of it is underway using Clarion 7.2....