Most current web browsers have a helpful feature called “autocomplete” that fills in form fields for you based on information you’ve entered into similar fields in the past. You’ve probably seen this if you’ve started to fill out a form asking for something like your mailing address… You start to type something in the first field (usually your first name) and the browser displays a drop-down list with suggestions for autofilling the form. If you select one of the suggestions, the browser magically fills in all the other fields in the form (address, city, state, etc.) without you having to type anything in.

The autocomplete feature can save a lot of time and effort when you’re filling out forms… but not in all cases. Take ProposalSpace for example. If you have a proposal and add yourself to it, autocomplete can be a huge timesaver. If you add someone else, however, autocomplete will try to use your information to fill in the fields meant for them. If you catch what happened, you can go back and correct the entries. If you don’t catch what happened, you could end up submitting a proposal with the wrong information for that user.

One option for getting around this issue was to disable the autocomplete feature altogether. That seemed a little extreme, however, so we decided instead to enable autocomplete only for your own information.

Hopefully this makes the autocomplete feature less of an annoyance and more of a useful feature. If you come across any problems with our solution, or have any suggestions for improvement, please let us know, either in the comments below or by contacting us directly.