Log in screen is confusing, not clear what to do

There is one issue that needs to be addressed. Some users will expect to be able to press Enter as soon as the login screen appears, in order to quickly access the password entry screen.

The proposed solution has been added to a wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/Karmic/LoginExperience#Login%20screen%20with%20user%20picker%20and%20more%20than%20one%20user%20account

The user name displayed at the top of the list should not be selected by default. Pressing Enter should result in selecting the user from the top of the list, unless any other menu item or button has been manually highlighted.

using enter do select the default user and ask for password currently

I've opened http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=593907 upstream about that

I vote for this bug, and think that it should be considered important -- after all, the login screen is the very first impression, and the current login screen (9.10 RC) is clumsy.

Please bring back the normal login where the user must type in their user name. Please! Give us an option?

I second comment #5. I'd much prefer that behavior, and at least having the option would be good.

(Yes, you can hack it by going to gconf-editor as the right user and setting /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/disable_user_list to true, but even that doesn't work quite as expected anymore: You have to click login before you even get the text field to enter a user name, when previously the field would appear immediately, with focus.)

If there is only one registered user on the machine, Ubuntu should display the focused password field immediately. This will resolve the issue for the majority of affected users.

i just turn it off:

gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory --type Boolean --set /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/disable_user_list True

since it's not usable having ldap/nis users (3000+)...

How about simply unselecting all of the usernames, so the user knows they have to click on the one they want. Or possibly using the old style with the last logged-in user as the pre-filled entry, and a dropdown that allows the user to find their name (if it's not the pre-filled one)?

Have a great day:)
Patrick.

upstream closed it with that comment "Going to close this as it has a few issues in it and some have been fixed."

Do you consider the bug fixed with current lucid-updates or maverick versions

How about having an auto-complete box for username which gives you top 10 list of users matching the currently typed word? And below it there will be a simple password text box.
This is scalable to large number of users as well.

Why not just have a small textual prompt to indicate to a user what to do. For example: "Please Click/Select Your Username" It could be incorporated into the login logo as subtext, or simply replace the hostname (since the hostname isn't crucial information to login) with the text.

I'm confused about the status of this bug, It doesn't seem like the upstream "Fix Released" status resolved this issue. Lucid Lynx still has the behavior described in the OP, shown in attachment login-screens.png for reference:

* image 1 - single user login screen
* image 2 - multiple user login screen
* image 3 - user password prompt

From this we see:

* Multiple users make it more clear which user is selected by default (image 2), compared to a single user (image 1)
* Selecting a user prompts for the password (image 3), note this screen does not have the "Other..." login action.

Consider that if we do show the "Enter Password" screen automatically (image 3), in the case where there is only one user, then the "Other..." login action won't be visible at first sight. The user will need to press "Cancel" to get back to choose the "Other..." option, which just introduces a level of ambiguity, more so than the current issue.

Hovering the mouse over a user shows a tool tip "Log in as wesley" (not captured in the screen shots). I think extending these tips to a text label below the login area, will make your selection more clear.

Several issues as specked, in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/Karmic/LoginExperience#Design ,have been addressed. Marking /this/ bug as fixed.

However one issue that still remains is what Mat mentions in comment #7 , https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DesktopTeam/Specs/Karmic/LoginExperience#Login%20screen%20with%20user%20picker%20and%20one%20user%20account , the design suggestion about Not having a "cancel" button.
We should open a new bug report for that and discuss it upstream.