Due to some DNS issues, you may temporarily be redirected to https://www2.passpack.com (notice the 2) we just wanted to let you know that this is OK. You may login and use your account as usual.

For good measure, if you were connected to Passpack prior to the updates, you might just want to logout and log back in again. If you run into any problems, please let us know. Thanks.

UPDATE: Complete. Thanks for your patience!

More Auto-login Improvements

We’ve managed to nearly complete the browsers compatibility list. After the last release, a few users were concerned that the Passpack popup was being blocked by NoScript. Francesco and Giorgio Maone had a quick phone call on how to possibly solve the issue. In implementing those changes, the side effect was a better browser compatibility. Alas, it still doesn’t work with NoScript. Here’s the list:

• Firefox 3+ (maybe 2 as well… you tell us)
• Explorer 6, 7 & 8 (IE6 is still quirky, but “works”)
• Chrome 2+
• Safari 4
• Opera - Sorry, still working on compatibility.

We also incorporated bug fixes in and around the handling of 1 Click Login vs. Click Through from your account logging in. We’ll continue with even more improvements.

Email Single Entries – No Bulk Edit Required

Click on an entry and have a look in the lower left-hand corner for the “email this” link. You can now send an encrypted entry to any person with an email – not just the folks in your People tab. We first introduced this feature as a Bulk Edit option, and have now extended it to single entries as well.

Wait, passwords via email?! No, no. Of course not. The entry will be encrypted and set aside securely on our server. Then a notification will be sent to your friend’s email, something like this:

Time Saving Trick

Want to quickly rename an entry? No need to open it up, just hold down “E” on your keyboard and click on the name in your list.

Type away then press ENTER to commit the change, or ESC to cancel.

You can do the same with your tags as well.

Last But Not Least – Thank You Beta Testers!

My mother would have my head if she found out we released Auto-login 2.0 and haven’t yet thanked our beta testers (she’s actually on Facebook, so please no one tell on me [wink])! So without further ado, here they are in random order:

• Gregor Lütolf
• Justin Maloney
• J. Allen R. Day
• Deltapi
• Paul Reed
• Roy Kolak, Noteworthy App
• Kevin He
• Bobby Brenman
• Greg Davis, Technically Speaking
• Diwaker Gupta, Floating Sun
• Max Sanna, Vision with Technology
• Clemens Lang, Never Panic
• Crístian Deives, cd1 on Twitter
• … and all the shy folks who preferred not to be named, as well as the humble ones that claimed “unworthiness” (you guys are silly!)

Thanks everyone! Also, to those of you who wrote into customer support to let us know the glitches you were running into – your help was very much appreciated. Please continue to keep us informed.

Greg Davis

The Auto-login 2.0 release is going well so far. But we’ve found some special cases when you might prefer version 1.0. So we have added the option to switch between versions.

When Would This Be Useful?

Example 1: The new Passpack It! button works well on Firefox 3+. However certain plugins, for example NoScript, may cause it to fail. Auto-login 2.0 release uses iframes as a sandbox to avoid Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), yet NoScript blocks all code running in iframes. There’s no fix for this. So, if you are a Firefox-NoScript user, you will need to switch back to the older version. Other plugins or settings may cause similar problems.

Example 2: On Chrome 2 and Safari 4, the new Passpack It! button works sometimes, but not always. For this reason the Auto-login 2.0 release was not activated by default. However, if you really want to, you could try the new version.

The option to switch is available under Auto-login > Install your button.  Scroll down to the bottom of the page and read the instructions. You can always reverse this action if you want.

Want To Help Test?

Naturally, if you would like to help us complete testing Auto-login 2.0 on browsers that we have not officially supported yet – use this option to force Auto-login 2.0 and let us know how it works.

If you already have a Passpack account, you need to reinstall your button. Here’s how. Check the browser compatibility below (scroll down). If you run into any issues, please let us know.

So What’s It Do?

• NEW – Double-click your button to get a full options pop-up
• NEW – Add a passwords to Passpack from anywhere on the web
• NEW – If all else fails, Copy/paste from the options pop-up
• NEW – Find a broken link? Send feedback quickly from the options pop-up

• Improved performance logging you into websites.
• Multiple logins for one domain? No problem. Now has copy/paste too.
• Improved training websites to login

This new release adds a few options and a ton of flexibility to the system. It was also an interesting battle to hop through all those crypto-hoops to make it work. Far too much for this post to cover, so I’ll go into more details in some follow-up posts. In the meantime you can go to Auto-login > Options for power users to play around.

Browser Compatibility

This is a first roll-out. We’ve got about 80% of our users covered.

• Firefox - Versions 3+
• Explorer- Versions 7 & 8. Explorer 6 is not supported.
• Chrome - Version 3 supported (but don’t use it [wink]). Version 2 still working on compatibility… it’s oddly very buggy.
• Safari - Still working on compatibility. The double-click on the button definitely won’t work, but there will be a work around for that.
• Opera - Still working on compatibility.

If your browser isn’t compatible, you can continue to use your current button – it’ll work just fine.

Since you won’t get any reply when you leave a suggestion – write into the help center if you need a reply – but here are a few interesting things we caught in there that I wanted to respond to:

Please allow sharing of logins/passwords with multiple people for free.

We do that! The free account allows you to start active sharing with 1 person AND you can receive passive sharing from an unlimited number of people. Read this article for a how-to.

The mobile app (for the iPhone) should be free.

Hm, well, we don’t have the mobile interface rolled out yet – but it’ll be free.

When I register at a new site, I want save it to Passpack at the same time, rather than having to go back and retype all the info into an entry.

Yup. That’s coming in soon with Auto-login 2.0 (in private Beta testing now).

“Copy password to clipboard” button for logging in to sites without the standard auto login.

You can do that now from your password list, here’s how. Also, the Auto-login 2.0 will extend that feature greatly.

Also, don’t forget that we use the number of votes a feature request gets to help us prioritize the development schedule. Right now, the mobile versions and Desktop improvements are leading the pack – so use the checkboxes on to vote for your favorites.

Not Just Chrome, Dev Builds in General…

In the past, there have been issue with other beta release of browsers – Opera, Chrome, Firefox, Safari have all had thier day. Almost 100% of the time, the issues that arise in a dev build resolve themselves once the stable release is out.

We simply can’t modify Passpack to be compatible with nightly or dev builds. Besides being an impossible task, we hope you’ll agree that our energies are better spent working on new Passpack features and improvements.

A Thought on Security

I’m not going to go as far as to say that dev builds are not secure – that would be a sweeping statement. However I will say this:  The chances of there being bugs that potentially open security holes are higher when the browser … you know… hasn’t completely finished debugging.

So even if you have a dev build that works with Passpack, we’d like to invite you to only access your account with stable released browsers. I know, we’re paranoid, but that’s our job [smile].