I agree that this feature is good while working with a smartphone, but I'm pretty sure Android has a settings somewhere to always show the last letter you typed in every password field. I would be surprised if there wasn't a setting for that also on iOS.
The thing is, I think it makes perfect sense to implement this in certain situations, but at an OS or browser level, not in the website or inside an application. Passwords are something we have grown used to and we always expect them to behave the same way! If we were to change the way passwords are handled, it should be consistent across everything.
For example, browsers could implement password fields with a checkbox next to it that lets you show/hide password at your will. The fact that this website has only one setting (always show when in focus) is scaring me.
> "I would be surprised if there wasn't a setting for that also on iOS."
That's the default behavior for password fields in iOS.
Trick is, when you have a long password it takes far too long to shift focus from the keyboard to the text field to verify each character before moving on.
I'd very much like to have a client-side show/hide button for password fields.
The thing is, I think it makes perfect sense to implement this in certain situations, but at an OS or browser level, not in the website or inside an application. Passwords are something we have grown used to and we always expect them to behave the same way! If we were to change the way passwords are handled, it should be consistent across everything.
For example, browsers could implement password fields with a checkbox next to it that lets you show/hide password at your will. The fact that this website has only one setting (always show when in focus) is scaring me.