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6 Autofill Features for Web Developers
A closer look at how browsers manage autofill for generic fields, credit cards, addresses, and passwords
What is autofill?
When a user fills out a form on the web, the browser is smart enough to fill in the value based on similar values that the user has entered in the past.
What is autocomplete?
When a user fills out a form on the web, the browser is smart enough to show possible values based on similar values that the user has entered in the past. The user can select and accept a hint value.
Autofill or autocomplete applies to the username, password, phone number, address, email, credit card information, or any random fields.
The differences between autofill and autocomplete are subtle. It is also possible that a website performs both in a single form. For example, it offers autocomplete suggestions while the user types a username. Once a username is selected, the corresponding password is autofilled.
In many situations, autofill and autocomplete are used interchangeably. In the HTML specification, autofill is the official terminology for helping users to fill in forms. It is achieved by using HTML’s autocomplete attribute to hint the browser how to, or indeed whether to, provide such a feature.
Why do we use autofill/autocomplete?
It helps users to fill out web forms faster, especially on mobile devices. It is recommended that users create strong and unique passwords for each website. The consequence is that complicated passwords are hard to remember. Autofill/autocomplete is a way for browsers to remember information, such as passwords, credit card numbers, addresses, etc. It becomes a user’s choice whether to trust the browser’s security handling.
In this article, we take a close look at how browsers manage autofill for generic fields, credit cards, addresses, and passwords.
Enable/Disable Autofill
autocomplete is an attribute of <form>. It indicates whether the value of a control can be automatically completed by the browser. Autocomplete has…
