I think we can all agree that browser behavior should not be left solely up to the developer and is not a black and white issue. Nobody here is arguing that. We are arguing for following a guideline that makes sense. This is why we have the w3c, an organization that attempts to weigh the needs of user, developers, and browser maintainers.
This was done by Microsoft by the old days, now it's Google. How ironic.
> When an element's autofill field name is "off", the user agent should not remember the control's data, and should not offer past values to the user.
RFC2119:
> SHOULD: This word, or the adjective "RECOMMENDED", mean that there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a particular item, but the full implications must be understood and carefully weighed before choosing a different course.
As I read it, this behavior may or may not be a good idea, but it is not a violation of the standard.
Disclosure: I used to work on the Chrome team at Google, but I have no particular knowledge of autocomplete.
if you would like to autofill the form anyway click"
i made it a little terse, but there has to be a way to make it succinct and human readable.
> I think we can all agree that browser behavior should not be left solely up to the developer and is not a black and white issue. Nobody here is arguing that.
GGP was literally arguing that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21239172
Should developer decide that fields are autocomplete off or green or show javascript warnings? Absolutely yes.
If user wish to change that, users thing. The browser/google has no business to be mediator here, second guess application they know nothing about and manipulate it.
The browser should be predictable, well specified and harmless. It should not force me to convert all ids into random strings just so that random data do not get prefilled in.
IMHO there are cases where autocomplete=off should be respected, and other times when it shouldn't be - it's certainly not as simple as saying always do or always don't respect it.
IMO the distinction could be made to not automatically fill when the autocomplete=off but instead add a button to let the user initiate it
> This is the behavior in Firefox (since version 38), Google Chrome (since 34), and Internet Explorer (since version 11). - MDN
Well, OP that I responded to literally argued that.
I agree the platform needs to expose useful features in a predictable manner for application developers.
But I'd much rather have browsers decide what's reasonable control over the user experience.
