How do I stop a browser prompting with past options

Rails
1

Browsers try to be helpful and remember that when you’ve filled in an
input field named “email” before it’s been with
“[email protected]” and they’ll suggest that entry again. If
you’ve used many different values for a named field, then they’ll
provide a drop down list of all the options you’ve ever used.

Mostly very useful, but not always. In my case I don’t want a long list
of previous options to pop up in a field because it’s annoying the
client. Also onchange behaves differently if you enter stuff into a
field via the keyboard compared to selecting from previously entered
values. In FF3 onChange isn’t triggered if you select from previous
values, but it is if you key the data in.

I’ve found a workaround, which is to give fields unique names, either by
packing the input field name with some random chars, or something else
that’s unique, like the id of an order. But that is messy, horribly
messy. There must be an easy way to do this. Maybe some param you can
set on an input field, or some javascript trick.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

John S.

2

On Jul 30, 2009, at 4:33 PM, John S. wrote:

field via the keyboard compared to selecting from previously entered
Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

John S.

Try adding :autocomplete => ‘off’ as in:

<%= form.text_field :email, :autocomplete => ‘off’ %>

and see if that doesn’t do what you want.

-Rob

Rob B. http://agileconsultingllc.com
[email protected]

3

Hi John,

I’ve found a workaround, which is to give fields unique names, either by
packing the input field name with some random chars, or something else
that’s unique, like the id of an order. But that is messy, horribly
messy. There must be an easy way to do this. Maybe some param you can
set on an input field, or some javascript trick.

You’re looking for the :autocomplete option. As in…

<%= text_field_tag ‘first_name’, nil, :autocomplete => “off” %>

HTH,
Bill

4

Bill & rob

:autocomplete => “off” %>

I guessed that there had to be a simple way, though of course it’s
almost entirely undocumented. I looked it up and, wonder of wonders,
it’s one of the few good ideas Microsoft have brought to web
programming, though it doesn’t make up for IE6.

It appears that autocomplete=“off” isnt’ part of the web standards
though most browsers except Opera will support it. Maybe it’ll make it
into HTML 5 or 6.

Thanks for the quick replies

John S.