[thelist] Cancel Form Field memory in IE

[James Aylard]

Brian,

> Is there a way to remove the ability for a users browser to remember form
> field values?

    This is called "autocomplete" in Microsoft-speak, and it can be disabled
by using a proprietary attribute, autocomplete="off". This can be added to a
specific form field to disable autocomplete just for that field, or it can
be added to the form element to disable autocomplete for all fields in that
form. Of course, that attribute won't validate.
    You can also turn off autocomplete via script or via a behavior [1], but
that wouldn't work for users with scripting disabled. Unfortunately, to the
best of my knowledge, Microsoft never implemented a means of turning off
autocomplete document-wide via a meta element, as it did for smart tags
support and Windows XP theme support. That would have been a cleaner
approach that would validate.

1. http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnie50/html/acoff.asp

James Aylard