Safepad has started becoming quite a popular tool with people, and I get feature requests from users all the time. The 2 most common requests are the following:
- Caching of session passwords.
- Generating user passwords to be stored in a secure document.
On this latest release I have focused on these 2 requests.
Caching of Session Passwords
In the previous versions of SafePad, everytime you open a document you have to enter in a password(s). Some users have found this a little painful, because for certain groups of files they use the same master passwords to secure the files, so they felt that when the application is open, they shouldn’t have to re-enter the password each time if the file has the same password.
This has been the most asked for feature request,so I have added it into Version 1.3. As you can see in the screen shot below, when you load a document, there is a check box to ‘Cache Password for Session’ when you check this box, the password(s) will be cached in memory (in encrypted form), so that the next time you open a file with the same password it will just open. If you try to open a file that uses a different password, you will be re-prompted to enter the password.
Passwords Can Now be Cached for a Session.
Once you close the application the cached password will be removed, so it will need re-entering when you load up the application. I didn’t want to get into the problems of saving the encrypted passwords to disk, I would rather just keep them in memory. I hope you find this a big usability feature. I have been using it for over a month (at the time of writing) as I keep all my staff 1 to 1 notes in encrypted files, so it is nice to be able to just open the files in a sessions without entering the password every-time.
Random Password Generator
The 2nd most requested feature is that of generating passwords to insert into a document. One of the usage scenarios popular with users is to use SafePad as a password vault. This is where you store all your website and systems passwords in a single document and protect them with a master password.
Generate Passwords to be Inserted into a Document
A requested feature is to have a tool within SafePad that easily allows you to generate secure passwords. This tool is now available from the Tools menu. It is very easy to use. You selected the password length with the slider and whether you want mixed case or not. The password length goes from 8 characters up to 64 characters. Once you have a generated password that you want to use, you hit the Insert button and the password will be placed into your document where the cursor is located.
The passwords are generated by created long random byte array using a Cryptographic Random number generator. More specifically, this is the RNGCryptoServiceProvider object in .NET. The random byte array is then Base64 encoded to make a string of alpha numeric characters and some symbols like ‘+’ ‘/’ etc.
These are the 2 new features of this release. I have been using both of them for a while, whilst testing the app and I personally find them very useful. I hope you do too.
The complete set of release notes for this version are:
- Added check box to the password entry screen to allow you to cache a password for the currently loaded session.
- Password generator.
- Fixed Issue where Document Saved Flag incorrectly getting set.
- Fix bug where closing the app when minimised causes the application to restore minimised, which makes it hard to get the window back. If the app is minimised when closed, it will save the state as maximised.
