auto filling

theluckofthedraw

I have got my laptop back after being away for a few days at the pc guys house (he only lives next door but he is good with sick laptops!) I have started today some comping whilst i have got some free time and the comps are auto filling - this is absolutely brilliant!! I have steered clear of the auto fill as i am a touch typist anyway and typing manual entries didnt bother me. I need to speak to the neighbour to make sure the settings are correct and all that but so far i love it!! although i did read a thread about autofills might not get looked upon for winning as against manual? thanks to all who take time to reply and post:)

Zanzib

I've started adding a space after each bit so the box that shows up yellow (on some forms) turns white, then back spacing it- some forms don't accept it if there is a space after the e-mail address.

No idea if it makes any difference...

Little_Miss_Wino

some good advice, thanks x

theluckofthedraw

so, where it auto fills and turns yellow that is the indicator that it has been auto filled is that right? i will give your tip a go with the backspace etc turning it white, until someone comes on who knows maybe if this makes any difference for us? but thanks for the advice before i get carried away submitting answers with yellow boxes!!

nelie

If it turns yellow it doesn't submit properly.

On a mac with my address book connected it goes yellow and then sometimes won't submit. I realised last year and now manually enter or use roboform xx

jeddentad

nelie wrote: »

If it turns yellow it doesn't submit properly.

On a mac with my address book connected it goes yellow and then sometimes won't submit. I realised last year and now manually enter or use roboform xx

I plan on running some tests this weekend when I have a spare couple of hours. Once I get the tests set up, it should be pretty straight forward to see what's going on.

Anecdotally, Chrome auto fill doesn't look to trigger events like focus (when you click or tab into the field) , change, or blur (when you click or tab off the field) and depending on how the form is built this could cause issues with submitting, but again, it depends on how the form was built and if it uses javascript for any sort of validation.

theluckofthedraw

thanks nelie, the few i have done this morning turned yellow with the new auto fill but submitted successfully, would you advise from your experience to submit them as suggested with white boxes (backspacing etc) or should they be okay ? I dont want to use the auto fill if it is easier for me to type as i have been doing, and know that my entry will be accepted?

nelie

I would suggest making them white. As soon as I did - I began to win. Now I don't know if that is just coincidence - or whether it actually made a difference.

I remember the occasions where it wouldn't submit being yellow, but, as soon as the boxes were white it went through.

If it is a case of having to backspace - it is much quicker if you are able to touch type - I can but I find that my wrists hurt after a while and its much easier to press a button! xx

Zanzib

I did wonder if those competitions that say in their rules about automatic systems might be screening out any that submitted showing the yellow...

But without knowing how it's been set...

I do know that some sites I have to put the details in manually, as the auto fill won't work.

theluckofthedraw

thanks everyone for your advice. I think i will type manually as i have been doing for now - as i said at my first post the auto fill was sprung on me out of the blue so i shouldn't miss it, although it does look tempting and quicker!! I'll keep my eye on the thread for any further tests/investigations by fellow compers on the yellow box thingy to see if it could have any effect of chances of winning

jeddentad

Just a short update.

I have an initial test showing that Roboform doesn't seem to trigger two important events on dropdown boxes (only on drop down boxes):
the OnChange and OnBlur events.

Chrome autofill (the full form autofill) only triggers the OnChange event, but it doesn't trigger any event at all on the field you initiate the autofill in. For example, if you double click on First Name and select your profile, Surname, Address, Postcode will get OnChange events, but NOT First Name!

I need to find one of the forms that throws an error on using Roboform, so I'll need to do some digging in Game Over.

The question of "why does any of this matter" is because those events, especially OnChange and OnBlur are often used when writing form validation scripts. Which to me says that using a "get rid of the yellow" technique is probably a good thing (please note some sites use CSS to override that yellow background)

A clever (or annoying depending on your POV) person could also be using those events to populate a "shadow" form, and that form could be what the website actually reads your input from.

It all depends on how much the site owners hate autofill. (personally, I love autofill, and this exercise has provided me some quite useful info. Thankfully 99% of my work is internal applications)