User:P.A./Form user experience improvements

Overview

Submitting information to visited websites, using a web form or similar mechanism, is an increasingly common use case on the Internet.

Web forms are currently the preferred way for websites to ask the user for different classes of information:

• Common personal information, for example a name and address for shipping a product.
• Other identifying information that may be specific to one website, for example a username.
• Authentication of identity using a secret key, for example a password.
• Authentication and authorization of payments using secret credit card data.
• Recurring input that may be specific to one website, for example search terms.
• Information that may be reused on different websites, for example the e-mail address of a contact.
• Miscellaneous information that is entered only once, for example a message.

Each class of information has different characteristics, but most of them can generally benefit from a mechanism that is able to remember past input and help the user in entering the same data again, on either the same website or a different one.

Themes

To offer a good user experience for all the different classes of information, the web browser needs to:

• Identify which class of information is being requested by the website.
  • For complex data, this includes determining which input field corresponds to which part of the information.
• Collect and store data in the most reusable form.
  • This includes building an accurate, reusable user profile from the available input.
• Adapt to different expected input in different websites.
  • For example, deal with two separate name and surname fields or one single full name field.
  • Different websites may have different field validation rules.
• Store and provide secret keys and data securely.
• Provide the simplest experience for completing the current task.
  • For example, identify when a validation rule applies, and prevent the need of editing the data every time.

There are current and proposed web APIs that help the browser in solving these problems. When updating a website to use them is not possible, the browser should offer a solution that, while not optimal, still improves the overall user experience. Authors interested in upgrading their website to provide a better form experience could benefit from several actions:

• Provide meaningful console error messages and suggestions in the browser.
  • These messages should be available by default to users of developer tools in Firefox.
  • For example, indicate why the type of a field cannot be recognized.
• Define and evangelize best practices for websites.
  • For example, a full name field is encouraged over separate name and surname fields.
• Encourage sites to adopt new web features.
  • For example, the autocomplete attribute and the requestAutocomplete method.