Is autocomplete="off" compatible with all modern browsers?
I've just been given a requirement to prevent browsers from saving data entered into specific form fields. It's been years since I've done web dev, and this is a relatively new capability. I was able to find the form field property autocomplete="off", but I can't seem to find any documentation indicating which browsers support it. Can anyone point me in the right direction of a chart of form attributes and browser compatibility?
Be aware that all major browsers are moving towards ignoring the attribute for password fields.
I can only offer anecdotal evidence, but I've yet to come across a browser that fails to respect autocomplete="off", this experience covers:
- Firefox 1.5+ (Windows and Ubuntu)
- Opera 6+ (Windows and Ubuntu)
- Chrome v2+ (Windows and Ubuntu)
- Epiphany 0.8 (ish) (Ubuntu)
- Midori (I can't remember which version)
- Safari v1+ (Windows)
- IE 4 - 8, Windows.
I'm aware that Greasemonkey scripts, and presumably other user-scripts, can disable the autocomplete setting.
There's a couple of articles I found that might be useful to you:
- How to turn off form auto-completion
- Using auto-complete in html forms
Password managers now ignore the autocomplete attribute for password fields in the major browsers as of:
- IE11
- Firefox 30
- Chrome 34
- Safari seems to have an opt-in option to ignore them
It should still work fine for disabling autocomplete on form fields, but no longer affects the password manager.
As of Chrome v34, autocomplete="off" is now ignored by default.
This somewhat debatable feature can be disabled in the flags configuration by visiting chrome://flags
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Chrome-34-Seeks-to-Save-All-Your-Passwords-436693.shtml
If you're able to use JavaScript and jQuery, you can place this on load of the html:
$('#theform input').val('');