Disabling autocomplete Options

[Brian Chandler]

Perhaps this is a Firefox problem only... (Opera doesn't do it, at least)

I have lots of forms with lots of boxes in which I want to type small numbers: 0, 1, 2, that sort of thing. In FF, every time I type 0, up pops an example of the wonders of modern computing, saying (implicitly) "I can help here... I guess the value you want to enter is..." (0)!!! So I have to do enough clicking somewhere else to get rid of this terminally stupid box.

I can't actually find how to disable autocomplete on my copy of FF, because the menus don't match the help I can find online (do they ever?), but I did discover the following thingy to go in the form itself:

CODE

autocomplete=off

Can you tell me -- is this standard, totally supported, etc, or a fringe FF thing? And does anyone have any better ideas for avoiding the problem in the first place? I mean, it really is insane to offer "0" as a "suggestion" when anyone types "0", and actually I can't see it ever helps to "autocomplete" from a single letter, let alone a digit. (Found someone else who couldn't stop the browser displaying their credit card number every time they entered a single digit.) Is this a FF only problem?

[Frederiek]

How about a search for "disable autocomplete firefox"? And this found within the first result: http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/contro...-fills-in-forms

But yes, people are considered nerds these days and computers/software start to respond to that accordingly. We now have to search for how to disable all kinds of so called "helping features".

[Brian Chandler]

How about a search for "disable autocomplete firefox"? And this found within the first result: http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/contro...-fills-in-forms

But yes, people are considered nerds these days and computers/software start to respond to that accordingly. We now have to search for how to disable all kinds of so called "helping features".

Thanks, Frederiek, but of course I found that (or a very similar) page. The problem is that it says "In the xxx menu, select yyy, and under zzz do...", and the menus are changed so often, in the interests of excitement, that this never matches my own version, so I am back to hunting for the setting.

The reason this one was so maddening, I realised afterwards, is that the stupid popup is exactly over the box below where I want to click next, so I have to do extra work to get rid of it.

A related question: in a large tabular form (lots of boxes in rows and columns) is there any neat way of making it possible to navigate from a box to the one immediately below? Tab goes to the next box to the right, which is *sometimes* what I want to do, so reordering the tab sequence is not the answer.

[Frederiek]

I only open up FF if I really have to, but I can't say I like it. Only yesterday, I helped my husband with a TD height issue in FF, to find out there seems to be a bug using heights on TD. Fortunate for us, leaving out the height solved our problem. Go figure.

As to your related question, the tabindex attribute still might be the answer anyway. See http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H4.html and http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#adef-tabindex .

[Christian J]

A related question: in a large tabular form (lots of boxes in rows and columns) is there any neat way of making it possible to navigate from a box to the one immediately below? Tab goes to the next box to the right, which is *sometimes* what I want to do, so reordering the tab sequence is not the answer.

AFAIK only Opera lets you do such things.

[Brian Chandler]

I only open up FF if I really have to, but I can't say I like it. Only yesterday, I helped my husband with a TD height issue in FF, to find out there seems to be a bug using heights on TD. Fortunate for us, leaving out the height solved our problem. Go figure.

As to your related question, the tabindex attribute still might be the answer anyway. See http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/H4.html and http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#adef-tabindex .

That seems to be what I meant as "not the answer" -- reordering the tab sequence to go by columns instead of rows. Since I sometimes want to go sideways, and sometimes up and down, this requires a couple of different key, such as page up/down to move within a column.

Yes, I'm not very enamoured of FF (nor of Thunderbird, come to that). Opera is still the only browser I have found that can backspace properly (i.e. backspace simply shows you the page you were just looking at; FF is hopeless, always trying to load it again), but I haven't been able to print anything in Opera for ages: it simply coats most of the paper in black ink. Perhaps I have made some hidden setting that says "background: black".)

Does Chrom(e|ium) backspace, I wonder?