I've yet to find a time when autocomplete has been disabled that I've not wanted to slap the web designer. Most every one has been on some sort of common address form. My browser knows my address. I don't want to type it. You'll get better results from my browser than from me typing, always.

Google Search. The search form has autocomplete=off so that it can be replaced with Google Suggest.

It's still useful to control unwanted autocomplete behavior. With Chrome, for example, if you have a form with fields name "name" and "state", even if they have zero to do with a personal name or state of residency, users still get their normal autocomplete in "name". When you select a name, if that autocomplete entry has address information attached, Chrome helpfully fills in "state" with "CA". Even if "CA" makes zero sense for that field.

Almost all other times, though, I'm with you: slap them!

Sometimes when dealing with high security you have to input a nonce. Autocomplete would be a nuisance.

Credit card number fields?

My browser can type my credit card information faster than I can.

Honestly, `autocomplete=off` is an unwelcome attempt to try to save me from myself.

I always thought of `autocomplete=off` to guard shared computers. I've turned it off for CC fields but the intention is that if you're on a shared computer the security outweighs the browser remembering something such as a credit card number.

I don't believe people type values into a form realizing at the moment that the browser is saving it for future uses.

They intend for that to be stored. http://www.chromium.org/developers/using-requestautocomplete

The change that they're making to Chrome only affects password fields.

+1 and even more importantly CVV fields.

I love it! So many companies have made it a massive pain to use password managers, and thus unique, random and strong passwords for individual sites, all in the name of "security," using that property.

I wish all browsers/password managers would ignore it.

Oh god, please no. I like using that to force Chrome not to remember form values in single-page web apps. :(

Click and read. It's for password fields only.

> PSA: Ignoring autocomplete='off' by default for password fields

1M times THIS.

This seems like it could be inconvenient for web applications that use <input type=password> in a non-login context. Imagine that you've got a web interface that can be used to configure usernames and passwords for something completely separate (say, for email accounts). Trying to autofill that form with credentials from the management interface, or saving usernames/passwords entered into that form, would be unexpected and undesirable.

i have a web app that has multiple password fields on the same page / domain. especially on config/admin pages. this is gonna break many things for me.

I do get their logic. And it is just for password fields, which is good - I've used autocomplete=off before when making a custom autocomplete solution on the page.

Yeah, so for example, Google (or anyone with a warrant) can recover saved passwords if the user signed in to Chrome (strongly encouraged) but did not set up a sync password (buried in settings).

It's awful if websites disable password saving. But I think that it's not good that Chrom is ignoring this attribute: Now some webpages will start tactics like renaming their fields every time. I always disabled autocomplete=off via bookmarklets, now for the annoying pages that create workarounds yet more tools are needed to save passwords...

A lot of the world still uses shared devices, and disabling this setting smacks a bit of arrogance, to me.

I use Safari solely because of this reason. It would cost me too much time to remember/retype all of my passwords, especially if it is a intranet type application that demands a password seemingly time I get a link and won't stay logged in for a reasonable time.

Didn't Safari just remove this feature in 10.9.2?

Safari in 10.9.2 ignores autocomplete=off. The preference was removed since it's no longer of any use.

Ah, that makes more sense.