autofill

Chrome lets Web pages use smarter autofill technology

I'll be honest here. I disabled Chrome's autofill ability. I hate it.

Maybe it's because I have too many e-mail addresses, or even regular addresses--I moved a lot in the last couple years. Maybe it's because my wife and I use the same computer. Maybe it's because my international life involves too many formats for phone numbers, postal codes, and codes guichet.

But filling out forms is certainly tedious, so I was delighted to hear that there's going to be a way for Web developers to straighten this out.

Specifically, Google and others are … Read more

Apple fixes stability, Flash, and Top Sites issues with Safari updates

Apple has released a couple of updates for Safari that address a few stability and performance issues with the program, as well as increase the accuracy and relevance of the Top Sites results and Address autofill information.

The updates are between 29MB and 53MB, depending on the system you are using, and are available for Snow Leopard, Leopard, and Windows if you are using version Safari 5, and if you are using Tiger then an update is available for Safari 4.

Safari 5.0.3 (OS X 10.5.8 or later)

Safari 4.1.3 (OS X 10.4.… Read more

Safari autofill exploit can reveal user data

The autofill option in Apple's Safari browser can expose personal data without the user's consent, a security researcher reported on Wednesday. It remains unclear as to whether the problem affects Safari specifically or all WebKit-based browsers, which include Google Chrome. It's recommended that Safari and Chrome users disable the autofill feature immediately, until further notice.

Jeremiah Grossman, the chief technical officer of WhiteHat Security, documented the exploit in a blog post on Wednesday, saying that it affects both the current version of Safari, version 5, and the legacy version, Safari 4. He said that the exploit is … Read more

Potential security risk uncovered with Safari's autofill

Digital security investigator Jeremiah Grossman has uncovered a problem with Safari, where websites can exploit the autofill feature to get personal information from the sources that Safari uses for Autofill, including the address book and Safari's own autofill database.… Read more

MacFixIt Answers

MacFixIt Answers is a feature from MacFixIt where our editors answer questions e-mailed to us by our readers. We have been getting regular contacts and questions from our readers, and hope to share our correspondences so everyone may benefit and contribute to them. This week we have questions about e-mail time stamps, spinning beach ball cursors when entering text in text fields, changing the default application for documents, "File Exists" errors when managing messages in Mail, and iTunes window resizing problems.… Read more

Turn on iPhone autofill

The Web browser has been kind of annoying on the iPhone, because it won't remember what you write in forms, like Safari or IE do on computers.

Here's how to turn on autofill in the new iPhone firmware.

Go to Settings, then choose Safari, and then choose AutoFill.

You can choose whether to use info from your contact list or previous names and passwords you've entered. This can really speed up filling out forms in the browser.

Fails to impress

Orca Browser offers users the standard features found in many of the more popular Web browsers, all of which work very well, but the extras it throws into the mix failed to impress.

Though a little on the cluttered side, the user interface will look familiar to you. Navigational and command buttons are at the top of the window. Menu options give you access to more customization options to change the view, as well as the standard Internet options for managing your browsing history. There's an auto-fill feature that saves you the hassle of signing in and out of … Read more

Poorly designed interface

This tool promises one-click auto-fill functionality, but for such a simple concept, we had to spend a lot of time figuring out how to navigate the program.

Once you get past the nag screen, Boondee Fast Form Filler has a very basic user interface. It consists of a single window with menu options at the top. Despite its simple appearance, it wasn't entirely clear how to add new entries. The Help file is a long, drawn-out paragraph that was more confusing than informative. We clicked the Create/Save List option, but it introduced another vague window. We seemed to … Read more

New Review: Typinator

Do you make the same typing mistakes over and over? A lot of people have trouble with certain words, and even though they know the correct spelling, just can't seem to train themselves to type those words correctly.

Typinator for Mac automatically corrects your most often-made mistakes, and works system-wide so you'll never have to worry about those pesky words again. What's more, Typinator can autofill e-mail addresses and other frequently used phrases using user-designated abbreviations.

Check out our new review of Typinator to see why it just might be the time-saving typing tool you've been … Read more