I've been working on a web-platform for some time now.
As I was writing the usual "Sign-up" and "Login" pages I realized that a whole page was an overkill for such simple tasks so I decided to put them in modal dialogs.
Aside from depending on JS, what usability / user experience drawbacks could this bring to my users?
(If you don't know what a modal dialog is see here)
Answer
While looking at a selection of more than 100 high profile sign up forms, I found that just 7% showed their sign-up form in a modal dialog, and I believe there is a good reason for this.
Consider this - where (if at all) do you send the user after they have signed up or logged in?
If you popup a modal dialog, the user generally expects the dialog to disappear afterwards and remain on the page they were on before the dialog came up.
But actually logging in and especially signing up represent a significant event or change of state and you'd normally want to welcome the user by taking them to a suitable page - and that doesn't usually sit comfortably with what the user expects when a modal dialog is closed.
For those interested the sites I found to use modal popups for sign-up included Slashdot, Pageflakes, Digg, HuffPost, Gist, Break, Barnes and Noble. Groupon also use a modal dialog for 'one last thing' after sign up and immediately after being taken to a welcome page of enticing offers
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