Plone login portlet and the personal bar could be the same thing

The info in the login portlet and in the personal bar should probably be combined. This would increase the perceived stability (Apple UI design principle) of the Plone user interface.

During some pair programming with Robin today for Betahaus I noticed that in the new design for a site, Rasmus and Robin had chosen to move the login portlet to a viewlet. This viewlet is also used for the info in the personal bar in Plone (personal bar has stuff like logout, link to member folder, etcetera).

This makes a lot of sense. The login form is only displayed when you are not logged in, and the info in the personal bar only when you are logged in. With this design, the same screen real estate could be used for both of them, since only one is visible at any given time. Conceptually, they also fit very well together.

Instead of a viewlet, this could of course also be done with the existing login portlet. In their present incarnations in Plone, the login portlet and the personal bar have different form factors on screen. Robin and Rasmus show info from the personal bar with a thumbnail of the logged in member, and also some dashboard-like links that gives the member access to recent stuff relevant to him since last login. The resulting form factor becomes identical to the login form's, so they can easily alternate in the same screen space.