> It follows, I think, that the luckier you’ve been, the more humility and generous spiritedness you need, and the unluckier you’ve been, the more compassion for yourself you need, and unfair as it may seem, the more you need irrepressible resolve.
> One example is how almost every password manager including the built-in one in most browsers will assume that if there's a type="password" field, then the previous sibling field must be the username. Sometimes they'll even pick a field far away in the DOM like your chatbox input to autofill with the username.
Nice note. One problem is that you are left without options, only hacks, to work around this heavy handed behavior. It wouldn't be so bad if you could opt-out with autocomplete="off".
And even if it did work, a spec is always underspecified even for the password manager who wants to follow it 1:1, so even in a best case scenario, you don't have implementation consensus. For example, you would think password manager heuristics wouldn't look outside the current <form> to assume the username field, but some do on some browsers.
The end result is that if you have a need that isn't the general case, you end up having to trade away UX to cater to software.
> Note that this behavior is defined as part of the `autocomplete` standard.
Yes, but it’s my understanding that Chrome ignores this attribute because some website authors abuse it to disable autofill on the login pages because “security”. I’ve also seen some places disable pasting of a bank’s routing and account numbers because “security”. It’s actually more secure for me to copy-paste those numbers than type them because I can’t make a mistake then!
It’s a tough call because I hate when websites do that, but I also want them to be able to disable it in the right places for security.
Yes, and the point of putting in the standard is so that it's documented how to author your website. Unfortunately, some not insignificant number of UI/UX designers want to push their special flow on users and so we get these incompatibilities.
Hopefully the specs and expectations will evolve to the point that if your site doesn't follow the spec no one will use it. I can certainly imagine Apple/Google/Microsoft/Firefox having a semi-seamless sign up and failing to follow the standard means you plenty of users turn away
The spec is underspecified for basic edge cases, like any spec, and it's very hard to have implementation consensus.
This stuff is supposed to improve the UX. Yet the reality is that even when building basic forms, every website has to test and solve the sort of problems shown in TFA.
How much of the spec does every web developer in the world have to read to know that password managers should or shouldn't try to fill in credit card expiry/cvv in a hidden input? Does the spec even say anything about that? 1Password will ignore a `display: none`, by the way. Can this be quick-fixed by ensuring hidden inputs also have `display: none`? That's something every website trying to consider good autofill UX gets to figure out themselves if they even care.
Unfortunately "just follow the spec" does very little to block off the rabbit holes you'll find if you try to perfect UX on even basic forms, else I might agree with you.
I would love the option to be able to skip a semester or two of college, but unfortunately if I made that choice I'd lose all of my scholarships and it would end up costing me more than whatever I'd make in the meantime :(
I share this view myself, neat to see someone else feels the same way.
I'm a CS student and I've been working at a Panera for about a year now. I love my particular store and the work environment is great; I genuinely look forward to going to work every day. I'll miss my coworkers when I have to quit soon to start my programming career.
That being said, I understand why those jobs could never realistically pay anything near what a good software dev job can. If you could make the same amount of money working a job like that, why would anyone put in the effort to get stressed out as a programmer? It wouldn't make sense.
The solution is to fix dev jobs so they're more balanced and less stressful :)
I work in cybersecurity now, but worked retail for 7 years, fast food (Subway) for 6 years, and a ride op at a major theme park (Cedar Point) for 2 summers.
If I could work the ride op or fast food jobs at my current salary, I'd take them in a heart beat. Hell, I might even take the ride op job for half the salary because the job could sometimes be a lot of fun.
But retail? Hell no. You could offer me double my salary and I'd still hesitate before accepting it. People treat retail employees like utter garbage. We once had a customer berate a cashier to tears, yelling at her and literally calling her an "incompetent stupid bitch", because his credit card was being declined and he was insisting she was just entering his card wrong.
I worked for a mom and pop hot dog/Italian beef joint in the Chicago suburbs in the 90s and that’s exactly what it was. A totally un-PC Italian family that didn’t take any shit and insisted you didn’t take any shit either.
> It follows, I think, that the luckier you’ve been, the more humility and generous spiritedness you need, and the unluckier you’ve been, the more compassion for yourself you need, and unfair as it may seem, the more you need irrepressible resolve.