I'm not quite sure I understand the purpose of the delay pages between actions. For example, when you login, it sends you to a page that just waits a little bit then redirects you back. If you succesfully logged in, why bother?

Just looking for some insight as to the reason of adding those additional steps?

Also, the Finish button on user registration adds a confirmation type step. (I have a simple javascript mod to register to hit finish on page load automatically, but am curious about these types of pages in general.)

For us developers and coders, I'd really like to start a TheWayThingsAre type of document containing why things are done a certain way and the thought/reason behind it (even if it isn't a good reason).

The redirect screens are there to give a message to the user that depends on how the processing went.

If you try to log in with a wrong password, the script will redirect you back to the login page - but the login page will not know that you have tried to login and failed and therefore it will not display an error message.

We are working on a way to overcome this and display the error message on the redirected-to page without involving an intermediary screen, since we are fed up with them, too

First things first, though. In XOOPS 2.1/2.2 (next version) they will be using the selected theme and in XooSphere (total rewrite of the core) the intermediary screens are history.

Just adding: in the IDG IT Course Guide you can see that just adding the theme to the redirect page will make it a lot easier on the eyes and a much more pleasant encounter (at least I think so )