Optimizing user experience by adding setting to select which forms to alter

Thanks (again) for the great module! Though I really love the functionality it offers, I am also struggling with a few settings that apply to multiple forms.

The core functionality of redirecting users to a login page works excellent. Optionally allowing anonymous checkout if the Continue without register setting is used works also great, but as soon as the Use username as order email and Use anonymous checkout as option to login form are being used we run into problems since these options mostly focus on the login forms, but also apply to the registration and user profile forms.

Situation 1: Only the Use username as order email is in use

When this setting is in use the following happens for the user login, registration and user profile forms:

  $form['name']['#title'] = t('Email');
  $form['actions']['continue_button']['#limit_validation_errors'] = array(array('name'));
  $form['actions']['continue_button']['#validate'][] = 'commerce_checkout_redirect_username_as_order_email_form_validate';

Problems:

1. $form['name'] only exists on login forms, the other forms use $form['account']['name']. No harm done since the other forms contain dedicated e-mail fields, but these forms now contain a name element with just a #title property.
2. At a login form: Since the name field is in the #limit_validation_errors array, a valid value is required. This is not being communicated to the user who sees two required fields of which only one happens to be required. Only after clicking the Checkout without an account button the user finds out that the name / Email field is required through an error message.
3. At the registration form: This form also requires a value for the name field, but it's title still is Username.

The Use anonymous checkout as option to login form comes to the rescue to clear things up.

Situation 2: Only the Use anonymous checkout as option to login form is in use

1. Now the login forms contain a required Username field and Do you have a password? radio buttons, the Password field is initially hidden. The user can continue without entering a username, so the Username field could initially also be hidden and the name of the radio buttons could change to Do you have an account?.
2. The registration form contains the required Username and E-mail fields, required Password fields (if e-mail verification is not required) and optionally other user profile fields. At the bottom of the form remains the Do you have a password? radio buttons. These radio buttons only control the submit buttons since the password element in the form array of register forms is located at $form['account']['pass'] instead of $form['pass']. Users might start filling in fields, see these radio buttons, leave it's value at No since they do not have a password yet, press the Continue button and continue to checkout while all input data is being discarded.

Situation 3: Both Use username as order email and Use anonymous checkout as option to login form are in use

This works great for the login forms: the name field is titled Email and is initially visible which is perfect since it's value is required in all cases.
On registration forms again it does not make much sense to me. Problems from situation 1 and 2 get combined. It could make more sense if the registration form initially would look like the login form by retitling the name field and hiding all other fields.

My two cents

Ideally I think the registration form should only be altered if neither Use username as order email nor Use anonymous checkout as option to login form is in use. In this case no username or e-mail address is required, an anonymous checkout button does not validate any fields and the user will just be redirected.

Also I cannot think of a situation where the Continue to checkout button at the password reset page comes in handy without causing trouble. I guess that users often first click the one-time login link, then the Continue to checkout button and eventually forget to set a password and have to request another one-time login link. Also see #2388783: Users cannot set their initial passwords when they continue shopping instead of immediately setting the password.

And I am curious why the user profile form is being altered, can anyone tell me in which situations this form is available for anonymous users? Maybe when using the Profile 2 module?

Proposal

Since I am sure there is use case for almost every setup, I propose to add a setting which allows site maintainers to select which forms should be altered by the module:

• user_login
• user_login_block
• user_register_form
• user_profile_form
• user_pass_reset

This way a site maintainer gains much more control over the user experience.

After this is done I think it's worth to optimize each combination of settings by reconsidering texts and which fields should be shown / hidden initially.