Do you mean the one which popped up from the browser UI before anything on the page has loaded? (aka "HTTP authentication")
Wasn't this abysmal? You navigate to some page, and out of nowhere it asks you for login, before you even see any content of the page. (Kind of like logging via terminal)
It wasn't an optimal solution, but it also didn't change much from the first implementation.
I think that if it had been given a bit more attention and made it more customizable, it could have evolved into something good enough to replace today's login form.
Wasn't this abysmal? You navigate to some page, and out of nowhere it asks you for login, before you even see any content of the page. (Kind of like logging via terminal)