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Is it more advisable to ask a confirmation to the email or a confirmation to the password in a website registration form?
I'm asking this because I saw this blog post that was featured on Hacker News of a rant of deviantART's registration that asks the user to confirm their email rather than their password as we usually see out there.
There are pros and cons but confirming the email seems to be better. I once had typed equally wrong my password and it's confirmation on a registration. Thankfully I was able to change it through my email.
The email is the most important thing of yours in a website registration, because it's through it that you manage your password and not only that but nowadays your email is also your login. The password confirmation seems a heritage from the past where most websites required a username.
Yes, I know, there is also cons. You asking for retyping something that is already filled and visible and there is the copy and paste problem. But that seems rather small issues for me.
As for preventing pasting, I, as a user, wouldn't bother. Just a light fade in/fade out alert when pasting would be enough to not let the user pissed when pasting.
But I was surprised of how much people hates this [1] [2]:
I hate you.
That is certainly ONE way of making me hate your site (and never use it if I can avoid it).
This is awful - Almost as bad as breaking the "back button".
"So we decided to give you a headache right now. Just in case."
Maybe all this hate is a fear that this kind of fix spreads out to where it shouldn't be used? Is the purism kicking? Complex emails? Laziness?
Dunno.
I can understand why some people find it frustrating, basically having to repeat themselves. A confirmation page that clearly displays the email might be just as effective as making the user type it twice.
Creating a username and security question might make sense to more people because you then have more unique credentials that can be used to login or retrieve a lost password, but without telling them to repeat the email. I am sure that most people will understand the need to retype the password.
Personally, I always copy and paste credentials so that I can use randomly typed passwords and store them as text rather than remembering them. I find it mildly irritating when pasting is disabled even though I understand it.
