> We have observed Chrome showing a password prompt on an <input type=number> which is just bonkers.
"We have observed" it, but not filed a bug? Neither of the bugs you linked to exhibit that bug.
No, there are many inputs where there is no sensible autocomplete value. For example, "create a new CRM customer record". This is a new customer who I have not seen before. By definition it is impossible to autocomplete.
In the past, the Chrome team advised to "make up an autocomplete value and we won't do anything with it". This advice is a) dumb and b) no longer works anyway.
> but not filed a bug?
It's clear the Chrome team has no interest in fixing this behaviour so I'm not going to waste my time. Yes, that's bad of me, but I have bills to pay.
It's clear to me that you only vaguely remember a bug that no one can repro. Nobody has time for that.
It's clear from the threads I did post that lots of devs are frustrated with Chrome's behaviour and the team's lack of attention to not just fixing bad behaviour, but complying with the HTML spec. Without even focusing on the type=number problem, I have spent enough time fighting other behaviour which is only an issue in Chrome.
> you only vaguely remember a bug
Thanks to that ad-hom I am now irritated, and I went back to our internal Slack to find the screenshot of the type=number bug. Sharing a screenshot here would have no real value to this discussion, but it's real.
Problem is we (my development team) didn't own the tablets, some other team did so we couldn't force the tablets to have in private browsing.
Well, too bad, because that's exactly what the solution should be.
Repeat after me: never fuck with spec implementation. If you don't like writing to a spec, write other types of software.
Let the ecosystem (website owners) face consequences of their own actions. It is better to blacklist bad actors then filling your software with bugs.
Sorry, but this seems like a wild mischaracterisation, at least in regards to the problems I've had with users on Chrome. In our experience, Chrome aggressively shows an autofill prompt on almost every input it can. It also ignores the specced autocomplete=off attribute. We have observed Chrome showing a password prompt on an <input type=number> which is just bonkers. It is not hard NOT to do this.
The Chrome team thinks whatever heuristic they're using is better than allowing developers, or even end users, to control filling behaviour.
https://issues.chromium.org/issues/41163264 https://issues.chromium.org/issues/41239842
(By "autofill" I don't necessarily mean the input is automatically filled without user interaction, but sometimes a promotions shown with e.g. account login details or an address.)
The argument has been that developers are naughty and turn off autocomplete inappropriately, which worsenes accessibility. But I've never seen e.g. a tooltip option in a browser to let me, the user, fill in details when I know they're appropriate? I am merely at the whim of the Chrome algorithm.