Prevent web-browser auto-populating username/password field

[dooley28]

I have a problem with a web application Im working on.
When a user logs in, firefox will auto-populate the username and password, this is fine however on the "user edit" page if a user wishes to update their details, firefox will auto-populate the variables here too.

I haven't tested this on other browsers but if it doesn't work on Firefox I have a problem.

Is there a browser tag or some javascript function that will prevent browsers inserting this data. I was thinking possibly an onLoad() watcher that dumps whatever values on the div, but if there's a simpler route with PHP/HTML it would be very appreciated.

Thanks,
Doolety28

 

[feherke]

Hi

If the user not want the behavior, then why not the user disables it in his/her browser ?

Anyway, the old trick is to not let the browser recognize the [tt]form[/tt] fields. Depending on what the browser uses to identify the fields ( URL and/or [tt]form[/tt] [tt]name[/tt] and/or field [tt]name[/tt] ) add some randomly generated part to it.

Feherke.

http://rootshell.be/~feherke/

 

[jpadie]

there are php solutions to this issue. Essentially, as Feherke says, to randomise your form field names.

but from a simple perspective, just add

autocomplete="off"

to your <form> tag.

note that this is NOT html4 compliant but is supported by IE and FF. i believe it is in the html5 specification, however.

 

[dooley28]

Thank you both for your responses,

My problem is my users will likely not know how to turn this stuff off in there browsers settings, so a server-side solution is nice.

For now I think I'll use the autcomplete=off for the moment and test how it goes, if needed I guess I could generate the input tags.

Again thanks for your help,
I couldn't find any solutions online for this!

 

[jpadie]

how about googling 'disable web form autocomplete'?

 

[dooley28]

How was I know to know the tag attribute was called autocomplete? With that knowledge I probably wouldn't have needed to ask.

Seemed more like an autofill, an autocompleter being the javascripty tool to produce a list of options based on what you type.

 

[jpadie]

without being picky ...

googling "disable web form autofill" also turns up the answer on the first page of results.

i guess i was hinting that tek-tiips expects posters to have exhausted to a reasonable extent their private lines of enquiries (having regard to the requirement to be an IT professional) before posting on this board. In this vein, johnwm appends a link to this FAQ in his signature:

http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=2244.

In the php forum we are considerably more lenient towards questioners than in other forums. Hopefully the fact that feherke and I both bothered to respond is evidence of this.

This post is intended to be constructive and not in any way a slight.

 

[dooley28]

No problems,

I did do some (obviously somewhat)extensive searching and asked a couple of people. I think I may have had something like disable browser auto-enter in my search because I was finding it annoying/surprising that I came up with nothing. Now in my searches I find it difficult to not come up with the answer!

Anyway apologies for time-wasted and thanks again for the help.