I'm currently designing a mini-application which displays user info (such as unread private messages, profile views, etc.) for a website which requires users to log in. Thus, naturally, the mini-app itself needs a username and password in order to do anything useful.
The username and password fields and other configuration options are stowed away in an initially hidden view, so as to leave the main "user information" view uncluttered. When the app is first displayed, it has no associated username or password, so it needs to ask for them somehow. My question is: should the interface...
automatically expose the username and password fields when it detects that it doesn't have any login info, or...
show its default view, but overlay a message recommending that the user log in (perhaps with an indicator highlighting the button which displays the login panel)?
Mini-apps of this type (namely, OS X Dashboard widgets) don't customarily show their configuration panels on their own, but wait until the user switches to that view voluntarily, so I think there's a risk of interrupting the user's expected workflow. On the other hand, this particular mini-app isn't much use to them until they do log in, so the first option may ultimately be more convenient — if they don't mind the interruption.