<CAA3nRaiAoYZYh0VnyU-1EppsLRTGrtS1i4XMqQD6GFg6KYDAFw@mail.gmail.com>
Current votes: None.
On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:17 PM, Ilya Sherman <isherman@chromium.org> wrote= : > Current autofill products rely on contextual clues to determine the type > of data that should be filled into form elements. Examples of these > contextual clues include the name of the input element, the text > surrounding it, and placeholder text. > > We have discussed the shortcomings of these ad hoc approaches with > developers of several autofill products, and all have been interested in = a > solution that would let website authors classify their form fields > themselves. While current methods of field classification work in general= , > for many cases they are unreliable or ambiguous due to the many variation= s > and conventions used by web developers when creating their forms: > > + Ambiguity: Fields named "name" can mean a variety of things, includin= g > given name, surname, full name, username, or others. Similar confusion ca= n > occur among other fields, such as email address and street address. > > + Internationalization: Recognizing field names and context clues for > all the world=E2=80=99s languages is impractical, time-intensive, and err= or-prone > (as good context clues in one language may mean something else in another > language) > > + Unrelated Naming: Due to backend requirements (such as a framework > that a developer is working within), developers may be constrained in wha= t > they can name their fields. As such, the name of a field may be unrelated > from the data it contains. > > > We believe that website authors have strong incentive to facilitate > autofill on their forms to help convert users in purchase and registratio= n > flows. Additionally, this assists users by streamlining their experience. > > To that end we would like to propose adding an autocompletetype attribute > [1] to the HTML5 specification, as a complement to the existing > autocomplete attribute that would eliminate ambiguity from the process of > determining input data types. We developed this initial draft proposal > working together with developers or several autofill products, and are no= w > looking forward to feedback and suggestions from the broader community. > [1] http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Autocompletetype > > Thanks, > ~Ilya Sherman, Chromium Autofill Developer > Copying from the "autocompletetype vs autocomplete, type attributes" thread= : On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 5:03 AM, Kornel Lesi=C5=84ski <kornel@geekhood.net> wrote: > How about merging autocompletetype with autocomplete then? > > It looks sensible to me: > > <input autocomplete=3Doff> <input autocomplete=3Demail> > > In case of <form autocomplete=3Doff><input autocomplete=3Demail></form> I= 'd > expect autocomplete=3Demail to override form's "off" value. I actually like this idea a lot. We had previously chosen not to extend the autocomplete attribute because we were worried about backward compatibility. In particular, we were worried that existing user agents might interpret <input type=3D"text" autocomplete=3D"bogus"> -- and hence a= lso <input type=3D"text" autocomplete=3D"email"> -- to be equivalent to <input type=3D"text" autocomplete=3D"off">. However, I just checked with IE, Chro= me, Firefox, Safari, and Opera -- all simply ignore autocomplete=3D"bogus". So= , we seem to be ok in terms of backward compatibility -- hooray! If I don't see any objections over the next few days, I'll go ahead and update the proposal to extend the autocomplete attribute rather than introducing the additional autocompletetype attribute.