#dev 2025-05-31

2025-05-31 UTC
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[KevinMarks] That sounds like a corollary to Norton's Law: In the long run, every piece of data or information is either public or deleted. It won't stay secret.
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[snarfed] yes! good call, related
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zachary.kai I have a question, if that's alright. I've just added autocomplete attributes to the forms on my website, and I've realized it'd be great if there were values for your personal website and pronouns! Can I suggest that to anyone? If at all?
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[social] Zachary.kai You could suggest personal pronouns, but I’d let people type their own.
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[social] As far as personal websites an autocomplete for the start would be helpful, but I unless you’ve pulled in background data / metadata (which many may find a bit “creepy”) I don’t know you could go farther than that to help.
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zachary.kai [social] That's a very good point. I appreciate you answering, thank you!
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gRegor Do you mean this? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Attributes/autocomplete
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gRegor There's a "url" value for that so your browser can autocomplete it
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capjamesg zachary_kai[d] You may be interested in https://github.com/alphagov/accessible-autocomplete too.
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Loqi [preview] [alphagov] accessible-autocomplete: An autocomplete component, built to be accessible.
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capjamesg [edit] zachary_kai[d] You may be interested in https://github.com/alphagov/accessible-autocomplete too.
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capjamesg I use that component whenever I want to do autocomplete.
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capjamesg I use the "plain JavaScript module" since I don't want to deal with npm, etc.
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gRegor I don't know the inner workings, but I suspect the list of valid tokens is in the browser, so autocomplete="pronouns" might not work until browsers update, but could be a worthwhile suggestion
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gRegor capjamesg, have you experimented with https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/datalist ? I've only used it once but it's pretty cool.
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gRegor I built it into a form at work that works as a combo select-from-options + search if you enter text that's not in one of the options
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doesnm how autocomplete is working? Can't test because [X] Firefox for Android
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[artlung] `sex` is the closest to what you’re asking, but is really meant as a freeform expression of gender identity. This was an improvement on the old drop-down menu or 2 radio buttons with male or female, and no option for “other.”
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[artlung] `pronouns` I suspect may be a suggestion to WHATWG already
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[artlung] Come to think of it, there was a tremendous blog post maybe 20 years ago decrying that binary UI gender choice, I think it woke up a lot of developers at the time.
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[artlung] https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/form-control-infrastructure.html#autofill
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[artlung] Actually, there were several posts from the past along those lines.
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[artlung] Sarah Dopp's is another. https://sarahdopp.com/blog/2008/genders-and-drop-down-menus/
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[artlung] No, this one. https://sarahdopp.com/blog/2010/designing-a-better-drop-down-menu-for-gender/
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[artlung] https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/13413/default-gender-male-or-female
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[artlung] But back to your question zachary_kai I think a `<input autocomplete=pronouns>` is a solid idea
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gRegor doesnm, When you're filling out a form for the first time, depending on settings/past interactions, the browser will ask if you want to remember the values. So if you enter your name and say yes to that, next form you come across with autocomplete="given-name", the browser will give you the option to fill in from what's saved in the browser.
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gRegor The MDN link above has a list of the tokens. Most commonly used for names, addresses, and billing information
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doesnm i think it worked without this attribute lol
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gRegor Probably, but tihs method is more precise
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gRegor I imagine browsers are doing some magic if the field name is like "first_name" it's pretty obvious it's autocomplete=given-name.
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gRegor The autocomplete lets you use any naming convention for fields though
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gRegor I'm speculating though, don't know specifics of the browser inner workings :)
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[artlung] and for personal website, zachary_kai, the spec says `<input autocomplete=url>` is that.
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[artlung] > _Home page or other web page corresponding to the company, person, address, or contact information in the other fields associated with this field_
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gRegor Just remembered https://indiebookclub.biz/ has autocomplete=url, so feel free to try it out there.
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[artlung] [gRegorLove]++ for that
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Loqi [gRegorLove] has 3 karma in this channel over the last year (25 in all channels)
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gRegor I wonder if I denied saving it in my browser, because I don't think I've been prompted to remember the URL there. Hm. Will have to dig into my settings.
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gRegor Ah, yeah, I have the setting off in my browsers
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[artlung] MacOS Safari is meant to use the operating system contact card as a source for autocomplete. I had "home page" as a field on my contact card. I also added "URL" just now, but it does not pick it up. Feels like not implemented.
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gRegor Time to experiment
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gRegor Yeah the chrome and firefox docs so far seem heavily towards addresses and payment info
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gRegor In Firefox I went to Saved Addresses to try to add one. Includes an email field but not a URL field.
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gRegor Maybe this is in browser extension land
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[artlung] the language of the spec also seems to create a correlation between url and *other* contact information. So in a form with multiple fields, for name and such, AND a url, possibly the mechanism for url triggers when there are other contextual clues.
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[artlung] > _corresponding to the company, person, address, or contact information in the other fields associated with this field_
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[artlung] anyway, gotta hit the beach now before impromptu indieweb get together
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gRegor enjoy, see you later
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[social] Safari picks up its autofill information from an odd place. It used to be a card for yourself in contacts that you selected. But, It seems to have changed in recent versions and I haven’t sorted out where to update that information.
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[tantek] What is autofill
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Loqi It looks like we don't have a page for "autofill" yet. Would you like to create it? (Or just say "autofill is ____", a sentence describing the term)
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[tantek] ^ worth documenting at least how to use autofill both as a developer to prompt for the user's (indieweb) URL, and as an indieweb user where to enter/edit your personal site so it's automatically used for autofill and web sign-in!
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gRegor what is autocomplete
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Loqi autocomplete is when a text field provides options based on the existing text entered, sometimes providing default options when no text is entered, this is particularly relevant in the context of Micropub apps https://indieweb.org/autocomplete
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[tantek] Yeah they are different
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gRegor I know, just checking if we had it
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[social] Oddly, I continually get other email addresses that aren’t on that card and one is for a company that no longer exists.
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[social] I found Safari “supposedly” uses the selected contact card you select in Safari’s Settings > Autofill.
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perryflynn I created a PHP file upload function to handle all the safety things. Did I missed something? https://gist.github.com/perryflynn/6fc08c278df6fe0aa83ef275392edca5
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[schmarty] what is autocompl
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Loqi It looks like we don't have a page for "autocompl" yet. Would you like to create it? (Or just say "autocompl is ____", a sentence describing the term)
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[schmarty] 😏
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[schmarty] autocompl is /autocomplete
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Loqi ok
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[tantek] lulz [schmarty]++
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Loqi [schmarty] has 13 karma in this channel over the last year (42 in all channels)
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gRegor hahah