Cool idea, though I haven't had 1Password miss a login form in a couple years now, and this doesn't resolve custom auths like banks that ask for single keystrokes among nth letters of your password. So the only forms 1Password can't handle, are still an issue.
Technically, you can already implement built in browser auth UI without changing today's browsers, by having the protected path return an http not authorized code triggering the browser chrome login dialog.
Note: "A modest proposal" in a title indicates the suggestion is satire. The original "modest proposal" was to eat babies.
I didn't know that "a modest proposal" was a phrase with satirical connotations. TIL. I simply meant that what I'm proposing is much less radical than many of the ideas I've seen floating around in the tech community lately.
I use LastPass and it usually doesn't miss login forms, either. But sometimes it makes mistakes that need manual correction, like trying to log in via the signup page, or loading the home page when the login form is actually on a different page, or remembering the value of every checkbox on the login form (even those with style="display:none"). Some websites also use weird tricks like loading an HTTPS login form in an iframe injected by jQuery, etc. This post was written because I got frustrated with mistakes like that and I realized that there's only so much second-guessing that a third-party tool like LastPass can do.
I don't let any software remember my bank passwords, so the issue of ridiculously convoluted logins didn't occur to me. Perhaps we could compile a public database of how certain websites (mis)behave, and tell browsers to handle such cases according to a script. But I guess we'll never be able to convince banks that automation like this prevents phishing better than the status quo does.
I also didn't want to propose anything that would require any more than a couple of lines of code to be changed on the server side. Switching from HTML login forms to HTTP auth would require more than a couple of lines to be changed on the server side.
For whatever it's worth, I took the "modest proposal" at face value and have never heard of the satirical association. Also I do rather like the idea of word groups basically meaning what the individual word meanings would indicate, as far as possible, though that's probably a losing battle.
Nowhere did I suggest to do away with all idioms. I just don't like the ones of the form "<adjective> <noun>", when the meaning is far from <adjective>.
It really was not, unless complete eradication of unfortunate language usages is the goal, which it is not.
There's a constant ebb and flow of bad usage and pushback. I only mentioned it's a losing battle because I think there should be a bit more ebb and a little less flow.
I think this passes under the rule of "common knowledge", at least for anyone in the field of linguistics or literature. The writing in question, A Modest Proposal, was written centuries ago, if you read the Christian Bible you can see examples of satire that are thousands of years old.
You may need to justify the "not terribly expressive" part, especially since the objection is limited to words that already have clear meanings (<adjective> <noun>) but for which the meaning is taken as the opposite.
As for the "bragging", you probably should read the comment again, there isn't anything in there that could be described as bragging. I'll also just posit that there's also such a thing as being well read without delving into Swift.
Another "factoid": The word "factoid" means a piece of trivia presented as fact, despite not being factual at all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoid.
Unfortunately, a lot of people have missed the original meaning, and now assume it merely means something that is true but trivial.
Edit: Just to be clear, I accept, and love, the fact that language evolves, but it's unfortunate when a useful word has its original meaning gradually overturned when there are no alternatives.
Also useful to know: the word "trivia" didn't originally mean a tiny fact. It comes from the Trivium, the three subjects that were taught as the basis of a medieval liberal arts education. The Trivium is grammar, logic, and rhetoric -- the basis of computer science and politics. After you finished with the Trivium, you would learn the Quadrivium: geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music.
Sort of. "Trivia" was apparently invented by an author named L. P. Smith in 1902 [1, 2], and has always meant "tiny fact" since its invention. Whereas "trivial" comes from both Trivium, as you say, there was already a Latin word trivialis, meaning "commonplace" or "ordinary" (it literally means "of the crossroads", ie. people and sights you encounter every day in a city) [3, 4]. I guess what happened here, etymologically, is essentially a merging of words that happen to fit: The Trivium, being the simplest course, was basic and everyday to the point of being "trivialis".
Technically, you can already implement built in browser auth UI without changing today's browsers, by having the protected path return an http not authorized code triggering the browser chrome login dialog.
Note: "A modest proposal" in a title indicates the suggestion is satire. The original "modest proposal" was to eat babies.
"In English writing, the phrase "a modest proposal" is now conventionally an allusion to this style of straight-faced satire." — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal