Agree with that sequence.<p>I built a custom publishing system last year for a group of newspapers (some upgrading their sites, some shifting online for the first time) and used email/password. Those sites have free articles and then others only available to logged in users (though it's free to register).<p>I'd imagine that username-based logins would have problems of their own? A lot of people would end up with very little idea of what username they had used or should use.<p>If you need to ask for an email address to run newsletters, alerts and the like, it just seems to me that email/password eliminates one extra item from the sign-up form?<p>I have logins at many sites (like most people here, I'm sure) and a number of email addresses too, but always find it quicker to login with email/password than with a username (e.g., Yahoo's login for Flickr) and the slowest on average would be those using account numbers; I know my betting site ID by heart, and one at a software distributor client, but I have to look up the one for my domain registrar every time.