Show, Reveal, View or See Hidden Password Field Text

Most of the websites and applications hide the passwords in the form of stars and asterisks. It is done to protect the privacy and security of the person entering the password from any onlooker shoulder surfing on the computer screen.

Good.

But many a times it is irritating especially when you are trying to enter a long and complex password. Many times it happens that you are not able to type it correctly and the website rejects your attempt to login. In fact there has been a debate on Should Websites Show Masked Password Text. We have carried a post on this issue and have expressed that it is in the interest of the user that the passwords are hidden in the web forms.

However, from the usability perspective, it is always good to give the control in the user’s hand, whether he wants his passwords to be hidden or not. Our opinion is that they should be hidden and the user should be able to view, see or reveal passwords whenever he wishes so.

And there is a neat way to do it with the help of a small bookmarklet. See this link.

Show Passwords

It is a javascript coded into in the form of a link.

The code is…
javascript:(function(){var s,F,j,f,i; s = ""; F = document.forms; for(j=0; j<F.length; ++j) { f = F[j]; for (i=0; i<f.length; ++i) { if (f[i].type.toLowerCase() == "password") s += f[i].value + "\n"; } } if (s) alert("Passwords in forms on this page:\n\n" + s); else alert("There are no passwords in forms on this page.");})();

Just click on it and drag it to your bookmark toolbar of the browser and release. It will sit there in the form of a bookmarket.

Whenever you want show the characters entered in a web form, just click on this bookmarket.

It will open a new tab or a pop up window in your browser and show you the characters entered in the password field.

Enjoy.

Tip: If you are like me who want to have your cake and eat it too, then RoboForm is an ideal solution for you. RoboForm is world’s largest used Password manager, which allows you to totally forget about botheration of remembering passwords and also handles their security very well.