[jaitsu]

I ranted about this on my blog whilst drunk, and then went off in a tangent, you can find it at jameshalsall.co.uk, 2nd post.

This really makes me uncomfortable, standards are there for a reason, you don't just ignore them because you don't agree with them.

[zimpenfish]

> standards are there for a reason > you don't just ignore them because you don't agree with them

People always ignore the bits of the standards they don't agree with; taking an entirely dickish and non-random example e.g.

<img src="http://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/df0e70f6e810442b86d701afcb...

https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/ says "4.8.4.1.1 Except where otherwise specified, the alt attribute must be specified and its value must not be empty"

Or having 4 <section> but only 3 </section>.

[Karunamon]

And sometimes the standard is wrong. The page telling the browser that the user isn't allowed to auto fill a form puts too much control in the hand of the page.

[DanBC]

Sure. Fix the standard, don't just make shit up.

Maybe the standards process is broken, in which case that's something that needs fixing. I can't see why the four browser makers can't create their own browser standards.

[dragonwriter]

> Fix the standard

The standard is that autocomplete attribute can be used to hint to the user-agent how to apply any autocomplete functionality it has.

The standard is not that the UA must provide autocompletion when it is "on", or must not do so when it is "off".

So, I don't see any problem with the standard and Chrome's behavior.

[kuschku]

Actually, the standard says that "on" is a MAY, but "off" is a SHOULD.

[dragonwriter]

Yes, and neither is a MUST.

[zardeh]

SHOULD is not SHALL.

[matt_kantor]

That sounds like what they're doing.

> We don't just ignore the autocomplete attribute, however. In the WHATWG standard, we defined a series of new autocomplete values that developers can use to better inform the browser about what a particular field is, and we encourage developers to use those types. [2]

> [2] https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/forms.html#autofill

In my opinion the new spec is overly-complicated and will probably not be followed by web developers, but on the other hand a binary "on"/"off" choice was way too blunt of an instrument. I don't know how the authors of the original autocomplete spec didn't see this coming.

[lallysingh]

You often need in-the-field experience with a proposed change before it's considered.

[dreamdu5t]

Standards are just made-up shit. Most of them are formalized descriptions of what people were already doing before the standard existed.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but no browsers have formally committed to adhering to the standards.

[wang_li]

> Correct me if I'm wrong, but no browsers have formally committed to adhering to the standards.

Don't know about that, but they certainly like to brag about the size of their standards compliance penis.

[saulr]

The standard is only a hint to the user agent, not a MUST.

[kuschku]

Except, it is a SHOULD.