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I just sent an email to my two state senators using their email web sites. For Senator Graham the autofill worked. But, for Senator Demint it didn't. Why?

Thank you, Fred Klintworth

PS It isn't working to fill in the fields below either. It prompts, but when I press Enter to invoke a selection, nothing happens.

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1 Answer

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Google Chrome uses the name attribute of the HTML form field to figure out what to remember and use from previous form entries. Rather than use descriptive names like name and address, Senator Jim DeMint's online contact form uses UUIDs like field_a3a9fc10-0bd8-47d1-81e0-b75bc46e7354, so Chrome can't figure out what to put in there.

Once you fill it out and submit once, Chrome should remember what you input for those long-winded names, so you should be able to use the feature in the future on his site.

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Unless they change each time the page is loaded. – Dennis Williamson Mar 9 '11 at 0:39
@Dennis I actually reloaded the page in question a couple times to make sure it didn't do that. Of course, they could change at intervals too, so it still might not work consistently. – Patches Mar 9 '11 at 0:54
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I was speaking in the general case. One reason to change field IDs is when you want to intentionally prevent form-filling for security reasons. I forgot to +1 your answer earlier, but here it is now. – Dennis Williamson Mar 9 '11 at 0:57

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