1350245 - [Form Autofill] Combine form autofill with form history when the fallback is being applied to an input

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Form Autofill, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Luke Chang [:lchang] (inactive)]

We currently will use form history as a fallback in certain cases. According to UX spec [1], the data from form autofill, which is related to the input, should be also included in the result in those cases.

[1] https://mozilla.invisionapp.com/share/AP8TFZ22G#/screens/190747707

Comment 1

[Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu]]

If my understanding is correct, we're going to have two scenarios for a given forms autofill field:
1. either form autofill dropdown is triggered and shown.
2. either form history is shown (in case no profile contains that field, there are less than 3 autofill fields to be populated or form autofill is dissabled).

My concern here would be that as we lunch this feature in the release population, we're going to have a lot of form history data existent in the wild. Once, the user submits first complete form, the user form history will not be accessible anymore since the forms autofill dropdown will be shown from that point on. Some steps for this would be:

1. Open Nightly, create a new profile, disable form auto-fill.
2. Have multiple entries created for form history - for example, real life, even though I'm not a frequent online shopper, I have around 5 different address related form history.
2. Enable form autofill and fill in a random form, let's assume that you fill in all the fields form-autofill covers and you submit it. -> you have created first form autofill address profile.

AR: From this point on, my other form history entries are not accessible anymore, so from an user perspective, I might see it as a loss of data, rather than understanding it as form history being replaced by form-autofill. 


One approach to improve the above scenario would be to have composite data in the dropdown - form history + form autofill, but I assume it's going to be a real challenge from the engineering point of view, plus I also think that such solution might even confuse the user further.

Another possible approach of the top of my head would be to actually import form history into forms autofill.

Matt,Vance thoughts?

Comment 2

[Vance Chen [:vchen][skype:vance.lucida][[e-mail]]]

also ni PM Joe/Cindy and UX Juwei to get their feedback

Comment 3

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

(In reply to Adrian Florinescu [:AdrianSV] from comment #1)
> If my understanding is correct, we're going to have two scenarios for a
> given forms autofill field:
> 1. either form autofill dropdown is triggered and shown.
> 2. either form history is shown (in case no profile contains that field,
> there are less than 3 autofill fields to be populated or form autofill is
> dissabled).
> 
> My concern here would be that as we lunch this feature in the release
> population, we're going to have a lot of form history data existent in the
> wild. Once, the user submits first complete form, the user form history will
> not be accessible anymore since the forms autofill dropdown will be shown
> from that point on. Some steps for this would be:
> 
> 1. Open Nightly, create a new profile, disable form auto-fill.
> 2. Have multiple entries created for form history - for example, real life,
> even though I'm not a frequent online shopper, I have around 5 different
> address related form history.
> 2. Enable form autofill and fill in a random form, let's assume that you
> fill in all the fields form-autofill covers and you submit it. -> you have
> created first form autofill address profile.
> 
> AR: From this point on, my other form history entries are not accessible
> anymore, so from an user perspective, I might see it as a loss of data,
> rather than understanding it as form history being replaced by
> form-autofill. 

How does Chrome handle this? Perhaps it's less of a problem for them since you're talking about a problem transitioning from a world without autofill to one with it but they have had autofill for a long time (from the beginning?)?

> One approach to improve the above scenario would be to have composite data
> in the dropdown - form history + form autofill, but I assume it's going to
> be a real challenge from the engineering point of view, plus I also think
> that such solution might even confuse the user further.

I had suggested this to UX at the beginning of the project but the concern was about how we would show the autofill footer if not all options were from autofill. I don't think anyone had a good answer for that…

> Another possible approach of the top of my head would be to actually import
> form history into forms autofill.

Form history is only keyed based on the field @id/@name attribute so there isn't a general way to do this. We could try to do this for some popular @id/@name combos but there wouldn't be an exact way to know which fields for a form go with each other (except for relying on the timestamps which seems fragile).

What if we fallback to form history if there are no matching profiles as you type more e.g. I type "San" in a city field (for San Francisco) and since I only have a saved "Mountain View" address, I would get form history as soon as "S" was typed… When we fallback to form history based on the typed text we wouldn't show the autofill footer. Thoughts?

Comment 4

[Juwei Huang[:juwei]]

It's indeed a problem, and what Matt suggested above is not a bad idea. Yet, consider about the majority of the use cases can benefit from autofill, I guess the issue of from history would be less harmful to the users at the moment.
I'll hand this bug to PM Joe/Cindy for the final call.

Comment 5

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Clear needinfos that are pending on inactive users.

Inactive users most likely will not respond; if the missing information is essential and cannot be collected another way, the bug maybe should be closed as INCOMPLETE.

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