I don't understand what problem this solves. Can anyone explain?
I prefer the >12 character simple password to the random digit type and I'd have expected better from a site devoted to technical experts as Stackoverflow is.
You only have to worry about character limits and no spaces requirements that some sites have (which are a billion times more annoying to me than requiring certain types of characters).
Dumb examples:
The cat in the hat.
The cow goes moo.
My favorite number is 3.
1. A good password manager can run or be made to run on many platforms, including mobiles and flash devices.
2. If you happen to use a single password frequently, then you should not forget it anyway regardless of whether you or a computer made it.
3. With throw-away/automated passwords for every site/usage, you can be more confident in allowing passwords to be saved for convenience in application password databases, e.g. browsers.
4. A good password manager should allow generating passwords based on common patterns which can be customized per site. Therefore, you become almost completely indifferent to the bizarre rules that some sites may require (since you only have to flick a few checkboxes once).
5. Password managers can easily measure and show you the entropy for your password.
A good one to use is Keepass though there are other competitive ones.
So, if your password is "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall" and you accidentally type in "Humpty Dumpty sat on a ball" you would immediately realize your mistake, because the password's color signature would be different than what you're used to seeing.
"Of course, my preferred solution to this problem is to allow the user to toggle the password field, so that they can view the unobscured text if they wish"
I am assuming that if the password field is being toggled, that it is not actually a password field but rather a regular text field with some javascript stuff messing around to hide the text. That would probably function just like a username field. I'm not really a web developer though, so it is possible my analysis isn't correct.