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Bug 22814 - Both autocomplete="on" and autocomplete="off" are UA hints and thus should use MAY, not SHOULD language
Summary: Both autocomplete="on" and autocomplete="off" are UA hints and thus should us...
Status: RESOLVED INVALID
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: HTML5 spec (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: PC All
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: This bug has no owner yet - up for the taking
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
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Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: 22815
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Reported: 2013-07-26 17:33 UTC by Edward O'Connor
Modified: 2014-04-10 17:07 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

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Description Edward O'Connor 2013-07-26 17:33:00 UTC 
Currently, the spec for autocomplete="off" says

> When an element's autofill field name is "off", the user agent should not remember the control's value, and should not offer past values to the user.

And SHOULD, in RFC 2119, basically means "MUST unless you have a really good reason."

Consider a site with a user signup form and a login form. The signup form doesn't have autocomplete attributes. A user starts to fill in the registration form, and the user's browser offers to create a new, unique password for this site. The user agrees.

Later on, the user browses to the site and tries to log in. The login form has autocomplete="off". Per spec, the UA should not offer to fill in the stored password for the user, because the author expects the user to type the password in themselves. But in this scenario the user doesn't even know the password in the first place.

Ultimately, the autocomplete="" attribute represents a hint to UAs, but UAs should be free to do whatever is in their user's interests with the hint.
Comment 1 Robin Berjon 2013-09-03 12:33:26 UTC 
What you describe here is IMHO very much "a really good reason" to do things differently. It seems to me that you've just made the SHOULD work really well.
Comment 2 Edward O'Connor 2014-04-10 17:07:51 UTC 
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are
satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If
you have additional information and would like the Editor to reconsider, please
reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML
Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest
title and text for the Tracker Issue; or you may create a Tracker Issue
yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document:

   http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

Status: Rejected
Change Description: No change.
Rationale: Fair enough. I agree with Robin.