Switchers' Blog

A 1Password alpha for Chromium is here

You've shown your support for 1Password in Chrome by emailing, posting in our forums, tweeting, Facebook poking, shipping sacrificial lambs (tip: FedEx is much more lamb-friendly than UPS), offering first-borns, and even a really good pie. We really appreciate all the love everyone, and I'm happy to say that we can finally return some to you.

We now have an alpha 1Password extension ready for testing in Chrome.

Please read this important stuff

Before we get down to business, I have to emphasize that this is an alpha, a term with origins in the Greek "álpha," which meant "extremely early in the development phase, with very little polish, and many nonexistent and unfinished features." Yes, even the ancient Greeks alpha-tested software, usually so the gods didn't have to. It's true! Look it up¹.

We're so early in the development phase for our Chrome extension that the main feedback we're soliciting at this point is "yay 1Password works in Chrome!" or "it doesn't even work." Right now, the only features that (are supposed to) work are unlocking 1Password and filling simple login forms (in other words: 1Password can fill usernames and passwords into a number of sites in Chrome, but we know that plenty don't work yet). Don't forget: this is an alpha feature for a beta developer platform. If you decide to help us test the Chrome extension, please leave feedback about these features in our new Chrome forum. You can email us too, but those queries are not as high of a priority for our support staff right now since we're in alpha, and are likely to be for at least a few weeks. You are much more likely to receive a faster response in the forums, so we encourage you to post feedback there.

Enough silly talk! Give me 1Password for Chrome!

Fortunately, helping us to test the 1Password extension in Chrome is pretty simple. We posted instructions in our alpha announcement thread, and they go a little somethin' like this:

1. Make sure you have at least 1Password 3.0.4 installed. It just came out yesterday.
2. Install the developer build of Chrome or the latest Chromium. The latest developer version is required to have the needed extensions support.
3. Enter this URL into Chrome's address bar: http://agile.ws/s/a330894b8 and install the extension from the notification that should appear at the bottom of Chrome's window.

It's a small start, but with all the requests we've had, we wanted to get you something sooner instead of later. We hope you enjoy testing this early alpha 1Password extension in Chrome, and don't forget to leave feedback in our Chrome forum. You can comment here too, but our forum is the best place if you want both the Agile staff and 1Password community to chime in.

Enjoy!

Extension not installing? Here are some tips

• If you've been running the Chrome beta, you may have to delete your existing Chrome support folder before trying to install the extension. I know I had to, and you can find this folder in ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome (where "~" is your Home user folder). This means your bookmarks, browsing history, open tabs, and other settings will also be lost. Such is the fast-paced life of living on the edge. The next time your start Chrome, you can use the Chrome > Import Bookmarks and Settings option to re-import all your stuff from either Safari or Firefox if need be.
• Try entering "chrome://extensions" (without the quotes) into Chrome's address bar. Click "developer," then update your extensions.
• Some users are reporting that if the extension doesn't begin working right away, simply restarting Chrome may do the trick.
• Still not working? Jump over to the 1Password Chrome Support Forum for help. Be sure to start with the Troubleshooting guide which will be kept up-to-date.

1. Ok fine, it's not true.

1Password 3.0.4 gains Quick Look, more tagging, and other goodness

It's time to run Check for Updates ladies and gentlemen, for 1Password 3.0.4 is upon us. Forged among the pillars of Mount Olympus, perfected behind lab doors at Stark Industries, this free update for registered owners literally gained over 60 new features, changes, and fixes. No joke.

To clarify: when we say "perfected behind lab doors at Stark Industries," we mean "3.0.3 was briefly released earlier today but pulled due to a hangup with the licenses window, which is why we are now at 3.0.4."

Leading the pack is Quick Look of attachments for 10.6 Snow Leopard users and a ton of new tagging features. Tag folders now appear in the Go & Fill menu, and they also get their own section and new icons in 1Password's sidebar. A new "Untagged" Smart Folders should help you get your tags in order. But if you don't use or even want to see tags in 1Password's sidebar, you have new preferences to hide that or any other Vault section.

Those itching to finally finish the switch from Firefox 3, KeepPass, and LicenseKeeper can finally start scratching. 1Password can now import from all three, in addition to KeepPassX and 15 other applications. We also now import the notes field from Web Confidential software license types.

We made lots of improvements to the Wi-Fi iPhone sync process, the way we turn dragged text notes into Secure Notes, form filling on a number of sites including Audible.com, and lots, lots more. Check out the full 3.0.4 changelog or go to 1Password > Check for Updates to view the changes and automatically upgrade.

Lifehacker: "Your Passwords Aren't As Secure As You Think; Here's How to Fix That"

Lifehacker's "The How-To Geek" wrote a reality check about password security in the 21st century, and the summarized thesis is that things are still not great. The blogger points out some pitfalls of modern security implementations, including the fact that Pidgin, a popular open-source, multi-protocol chat client, stores account passwords on the drive in plain text. Egad.

The How-To Geek arrives at the ultimate conclusion that: 

The only truly secure way to store your passwords is to use a password manager to securely track your passwords, combined with a a great master password to protect the rest of your saved passwords.

A link to a previous Lifehacker post, Five Best Password, Managers, offers some great recommendations for taking your online security up a notch, including 1Password.

We're always grateful to get a mention from a great publication like Lifehacker. But it's also good to hear a call to both developers and users to take security more seriously.

A look back at a very Agile 2009

What a year! We laughed, we cried, but fortunately, no one hurled. We kicked off 2009 by winning an award at Macworld, then expanded the company by hiring four new people, and hit our home stretch by releasing major new versions of both 1Password and AllBookmarks.

Plenty more happened along the way, though, so pull up a chair and look back with us at a very Agile year.

January 9, 2009: Agile Web Solutions wins Best of Show Award at Macworld for 1Password from Macsimum News / MacTech Magazine. Not a bad start, if we may say so ourselves.

February 25: Apple released a beta of Safari 4, and ever the agile (nyuk nyuk) company, we sprang into action the same day with support for it.

May 19: May was a good month for 1Password exposure. CNET made 1Password an Editor's Choice, and NPR recommended 1Password twice to listeners.

May 29: Apple picks 1Password as a "Featured Download" on its official Downloads site.

June 2: 1Password touch 2.0 arrived with 1Password 2.9.16 and a rewritten Wi-Fi sync feature. Sync finally got a lot easier, but stayed just as secure as ever.

June 8: 1Password touch was spotted in Apple's official iPhone 3GS Guided Tour video. It's good to see Apple promoting (if only secondhand) the practice of staying secure even while on-the-go.

June 8-12: Agile Web Solutions partied it up got down to seriously serious business at WWDC 2009.

June 17: Apple released iPhone OS 3.0, and both versions of 1Password touch got their groove on. The standard version was ready for the new OS, and 1Password touch Pro gained some fancy new features powered by the new OS.

July: Macworld tipped its hat in our direction not one, not two, but three times. First, Macworld's Joe Kissell called 1Password "outstanding" and touted our Strong Password Generator, then he highlighted that 1Password is great for organizing a lot more than passwords. Macworld's Dan Frakes upped the ante later in July, though, by creating a video called "Why [Macworld] loves 1Password](http://www.switchersblog.com/2009/07/why-macworld-loves-1password.html). Thanks again for such kind words and videos guys!

July 16: Twittergate. Twitter got hacked and hundreds of the company's internal business documents were stolen (note: not the usernames or passwords of Twitter users). Now we are always bummed and sympathetic when something terrible like this happens. But we were also honored that Twitter co-founder Evan Williams recommended 1Password in the wake of the hack.

August 26: We didn't want Snow Leopard beta users to suffer life without 1Password, so we released a limited beta of 1Password 3 for those who ventured forth.

Fun (non)fact: forcing Mac users to go without 1Password is considered torture in some countries. Honest. But don't look that up; just trust me.

October 28: We swung open the doors to the public for the 1Password 3 beta. There was much rejoicing. And testing.

November 19: 1Password 3 gets all grown up and sheds the beta badge. There was much rejoicing. Again.

November 24: We gave away 1Password touch for free as a Thanksgiving Thank You sale to our customers.

November 30: Leo Laporte, tech and podcasting pioneer of the TWiT network, picked 1Password 3 for his MacBreak Weekly Pick of the Week.

December 8: Google's new Chrome browser finally came to the Mac in a very early official beta, and our master code chefs sprang to action. We began cooking up a brand new extension for Chrome, and while it is still in the oven, our 1Password Logins Bookmarklet can bring a little 1Password 3 to Chrome for now.

December 11: Not ones to rest on our laurels, we released AllBookmarks 4.0, a major update to our free browser bookmarks aggregator. The new version gained support for 1Password 3 bookmarks, a keyboard shortcut, and running in 64-bit on Snow Leopard.

To make sure Agile Web Solutions can continue to be all it can be, make great software, and provide speedy support to our stellar customers, we also hired four more ninjas throughout the year. Not including accountants and lawyers, we're up to 12 Agile folks now, and in 2009 we welcomed Marty Skinner, David Brown, Cindy Compton, and me to the team. At least I think I was welcomed to the team. Jamie stole my red stapler the first week I was here, and they keep moving my desk towards the basement stairs.

We'd like to say thanks to the people who made this all possible, so: thank you. Yes you, dear customer of Agile Web Solutions and reader of the blog. We couldn't make great software for a living without you, and we look forward to making more great stuff for you in 2010.

Happy New Year everyone!
The Agile Web Solutions team

Tip: Add tags when saving new Logins from your browser

Among the 30 improvements we added to 1Password 3.0.2 yesterday is a new box for tags in our Save to 1Password tool. Now when you save a new Login from Safari, Firefox, and other dedicated browsers, you'll be able to add tags (support for organizing your items with tags is new in 1Password 3). In addition to customizing the Login's name and placing it in a folder, this adds another powerful layer of 1Password organization right in your browser.

1Password 3.0.2 gains Smart Folders, 30 other improvements (Updated)

It's time to check for updates, ladies and gentlemen, for a new version of 1Password 3 is upon us. This small, unassuming 3.0.2 update brings over two dozen changes and one big new feature, so read on for an overview or head to the 1Password > Check for Updates menu to grab it now.

Smart Folders have arrived

Now when you create a complex or filtered Smart Search in 1Password 3, you can keep it around by saving it as a Smart Folder. In the example above, I searched for all notes that are tagged with "work" (thanks to 1Password 3's new support for tags), but then added a couple of operators to filter my results. I am excluding all Secure Notes and Accounts item types from the Vault, and I specified that only notes with "AWS" (Agile Web Solutions) in their title should appear.

This is a great Smart Search for my personal use, as it shows just my Logins for my Agile Web Solutions work. It could also be useful for helping a new employee, as I could further tune this search to generic team-based Logins, then export and share these Logins to help a newbie get on board more quickly. Now with the ability to turn Smart Searches into Smart Folders, this dynamic and evolving set of Logins is always just a mouse click away.

Identities now help protect your email

1Password 3.0.2 doesn't stop at customizable Smart Folders, though. We also added support to 1Password Identities for domain tokens, an email privacy trick of services like OtherInbox and Gmail. These services let you easily create fake or throwaway email addresses, like shopping@you.otherinbox.com or username+shopping@gmail.com. These alternate addresses still send messages to your main inbox, but they're great for filtering email based on keywords or if they begin attracting spam. These services are a great way to protect your real email address, and 1Password 3 can help you use them even more effectively while barely lifting a finger.

Now you can add your email address to your 1Password 3 Identities with a domain placeholder like username+[domain]@gmail.com, or [domain]@username.otherinbox.com. When you use that Identity to register for a site or fill in a shopping cart, 1Password will automatically fill your email address into forms with the current site's domain name automatically inserted into your address.

For example, say you're registering at Amazon.com and you use an Identity with one of these special email addresses. When 1Password fills in your address, it will become your-username+amazon.com@gmail.com, or amazon.com@your-username.otherinbox.com. This way you can use email filters to automatically file messages into a shopping folder/label, send them to the trash, or block them entirely. It's another way that 1Password makes your browsing more secure and convenient.

Lots of other changes

Also included in the 1Password 3.0.2 update: Tags in our Save to 1Password tool, user agent support for Firefox 3.6 betas, improvements to hiding your information in 1PasswordAnywhere, a fix for crashes when editing very large Secure Notes, some issues specific to Leopard 10.5.8 users, Command+S now accepts editing changes (in addition to Command+E), design and language tweaks, and much more.

You can view the entire changelog on our 1Password versions page, or just get to updating from the 1Password > Check for Updates menu.

Tip: Get a little 1Password 3 in Google Chrome (and Opera!) now (Updated)

Google released the first official beta of Chrome for Mac on Tuesday. Many of our customers have been asking for us to support Chrome, so we have both good and bad news about this release. I'll get the bad news out of the way because I think the good news will make up for it.

The (Temporarily) Bad News

Unfortunately, we have to wait for Google before we can officially support Chrome because extensions were turned off for this release, and Chrome for Mac itself is in a constant state of flux. A lot of under-the-hood changes come fairly frequently—changes you may not see as users, but changes that, as developers, can be quite significant, difficult, and time-consuming to repeatedly adjust for.

These changes are great for progress, but bad for small software shops like us who can't afford the time and manpower to keep up with such an evolving beta project. Our ability to maintain rapid support response times and update 1Password for the Mac and iPhone would suffer, and I don't think any of us would want that.

The Good News—Get A Little 1Password in Chrome now!

Update: Thanks to Leo M in the comments below, I've updated this process to slim down to just two steps for most users.

If you're just dying—dying!—to use 1Password in Chrome for Mac right now, the good news is that you can. A little. While we don't have an official extension that will load in Chrome yet, you can use 1Password 3's new Logins Bookmarklet feature to create a 1Password bookmarklet in Safari that contains your Logins, then import your Safari bookmarks into Chrome. Here's a quickie on how to set it up:

1. Create a Logins Bookmarklet in 1Password 3 from the gear menu in the lower left.

Pick which logins and folders you want this bookmarklet to contain, set an access code at the top (make it a good one!), and click "Update Now" in the lower right to add the bookmarklet to Safari.

2. Drag your Logins Bookmarklet from Safari to Chrome

• Open both Safari and Chrome, then resize or move them so you can see both on screen at once.
• In Chrome, choose View > Always Show Bookmarks Bar
• In Safari, choose Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks, then drag the Logins Bookmarklet from Safari's bookmarks sidebar to Chrome's Bookmarks Bar

Alternate Version: If you want to import all Safari Bookmarks

Chrome allows you to import all your bookmarks from Safari (and Firefox for that matter). If you go this route instead, you'll have to move your Logins Bookmarklet to Safari's Bookmarks Menu or Bookmarks Bar before importing into Chrome, as Chrome cannot see bookmarks in Safari's "Collections" sidebar.

After performing Step 1 from above, continue here:

2. Organize your Logins Bookmarklet

Because Chrome For Mac does not offer even basic bookmark organization features, you'll need to organize your Logins Bookmarklet in Safari before importing to Chrome.

By default, 1Password will add your Logins Bookmarklet to Safari's Collections area, so you'll need to move it to a more Chrome-friendly location. Open Safari, go to Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks, then click either the Bookmarks Bar or Bookmarks Menu sections. Drag the Logins Bookmarklet into the section or folder you prefer.

3. Import into Chrome

The first time you start Chrome, it will offer to import your information from another browser. If this is your first time running Chrome, Make sure Safari is selected, then click "Start Google Chrome" to perform the import and get to Chroming.

If you have already been running Chrome and need to import your Safari bookmarks, go to Chrome > Import Bookmarks and Settings option to start the import tool manually.

4. Enjoy a little 1Password in Chrome

When you need to log into a site in Chrome, just click your Logins Bookmarklet to open a nifty 1Password overlay window. Type in the Access Code you set in step 1, click the proper Login, and watch the magic happen.

Let us know what you think

The Chrome for Mac beta just came out this morning, so we haven't had a lot of time to test how our Logins Bookmarklet performs in Chrome yet. It should be able to fill most sites that 1Password can, and it should present only the relevant Logins for each site. As always, though, we're open to feedback, so comment here or get in touch with support to let us know how it goes.

As a reminder though, official support for Chrome is coming, but we don't have an ETA to share yet. Google definitely means "beta" this time, so we're keeping an eye on Chrome's progress and will enhance it with 1Password as soon as possible.

Super Extra Important Things To Know

• Our Logins Bookmarklet feature is one-way, so you can't add new Logins to it from Chrome. It was originally designed as a tool to make it easier to use your Logins in Mobile Safari on iPhone and iPod touch, but it just so happens to work fine with desktop, standards-based browsers like Chrome, too
• Just like its name states, the Logins Bookmarklet only does 1Password Logins; it does not bring your 1Password Identities or Credit Cards to Chrome
• Be sure to use a complex password for your Logins Bookmarklet Access Code. You can make it the same as your 1Password Master Password if that's already pretty strong, but for the ultimate in security, you should probably make it something different. All the usual rules still apply: use a special character or two, use capital and lower-case letters, no plain language words, etc. Just like 1Password, and any password management system for that matter, the security of the information in your Logins Bookmarklet relies on the strength of your Access Code.
• Opera users: After brief testing, Logins Bookmarklets appear to work in Opera 10, too. While our official policy on Opera support is still that we can't do it because Opera does not (and does not plan to) offer the proper extension support that third parties like us need, a Logins Bookmarklet is at least an option for you.

Chrome support is coming, but waiting on Google

At version 4, Google Chrome will finally get around to the Mac. We're almost as excited as you are for a shiny new browser, which is why we've updated our official Google Chrome support status on our browser requirements page to "working on it."

The first official, public beta of Chrome 4 for Mac is imminent. But we're going to need some time to work on supporting Chrome because Google needs more time in order to let third-party developers support Chrome. An official changelog on the Google Chrome release blog for developers says that extensions are disabled in a recent developer release, and will remain so for the first Mac beta. That means Chrome needs some more time in the beta oven before it's ready to let extensions like ours add features and functionality.

Rest assured, we're keeping an eye on Chrome's development. While even the developer versions may look and work fine for many users, the fact that it is not even in beta yet means that a tremendous amount of code, features, and API implementations are in flux "under the hood." We need to wait for Chrome's dust to settle a bit so we don't sacrifice our ability to make great, reliable software and respond quickly to support requests.

Bottom line: when Chrome is ready for extensions, we will enhance it with 1Password.

Leo Laporte chooses 1Password 3 for his MacBreak Weekly Pick

We want to extend a big thanks to Leo Laporte, the brains and voice behind the TWiT Netcast Network, for choosing 1Password 3 as his Pick of the Week in MacBreak Weekly episode 168!

Leo touts a number of features in the upgrade like the new software licenses section, file attachments, Edit in Browser, tags, and others, then says "1Password 3 is easily the best password management utility on the Mac." Who are we to argue with Leo Laporte? Thanks a bunch for the kind words Leo!

1Password 3.0.1 gains support for Camino 2, dragging text files

What, after releasing 1Password 3 barely four days ago you expected us to be resting on our laurels? To be vacationing in the Bahamas? That's just silly talk! There is always work to be done, which is why 1Password 3.0.1 is already waiting for you in the 1Password > Check for Updates menu.

While 3.0.1 isn't nearly the life-altering, mind-bending release that 1Password 3 was, it will hopefully bring smiles to at least a few people's faces. First, support for the recently released Camino 2 has arrived. Plus, Yojimbo users should have an easier time moving over some information, now that you can drag multiple .TXT, .RTF, and .RTFD files into 1Password to create Secure Notes for each one.

Naturally, a number of tweaks and ruthlessly squashed bugs made this release. Search result options, viewing very long passwords, and switching Agile Keychains should all behave properly in 3.0.1, and certain Help menu options that cannot be used while 1Password is locked are now grayed out.

You can see the full changelog before installing if you check for updates, so go get 'em Tiger. Er, Snow Leopard.