Why is Microsoft Edge autofilling disabled fields on my Webform CiviCRM?

Question

We're struggling with a complex Webform that is auto-populating the wrong values into some text fields in Edge browser. The text fields are pulling data (phone number, email, address) from an existing Company Contact - and if those values are NULL in CiviCRM - Microsoft Edge happily populates these fields with previously seen but completely irrelevant and incorrect phone number, email and address.

We've since reproduced this on a number of sample forms.

Some illustrations - this is Chrome [Semper IT - with phone has a phone number in the CiviCRM database; Semper IT - no phone does not]. The yellow fields are the auto-fills from Chrome

And here's what Microsoft Edge does with this exact same form (apparently I live in Edmonton now). The blue fields are the auto-fills from Microsoft Edge. Thank you Laura for the screenshot!

Answer 1

I found the answer in a post on the Miscrosoft developer forum: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platform/issues/9847360/

Some of the 'highlights':

From Microsoft: “In IE11 and Edge, we made the decision to ignore autocomplete=off”

From a developer: WHAT !!! ??? That’s why we are receiving so many UI complaints recently. This is a terrible decision Microsoft. Please STOP breaking Edge by NOT supporting standard HTML correctly. Edge should honor the autocomplete="off" tag.

And from another one: “By Design” doesn’t mean that the functionality is correct. I’m struggling with a complex web form that is auto-populating the wrong values into some text fields in Edge browser"