Letting the web browser handle some of the form filling automatically can save lots of time and frustration. Most web browsers offer autofill in one form or the other, either directly in the core framework or through browser extensions.

Google Chrome was one of the last browsers not supporting autofill, at least not in the beta and stable releases. This has changed with the latest beta release of the web browser, as it included autofill. Sorry stable users, still no autofill for you at this time, but expect it to hit your browser soon as well.

To introduce the new feature, Google has created a video demonstrating the capabilities of AutoFill in Chrome.

AutoFill currently supports a semi-automated way of aiding the web user in filling out forms on the Internet. It supports multiple datasets and will display suggestions once the user double-clicks into a form field, or starts entering the first character.

Form data is saved in address sets, that consist of standard information like name, street, zip, location or phone number. Selecting an entry from the list will automatically fill all relevant fields in the web form, if the information exist in the address set.

Chrome can also record sensitive information like credit card numbers, but will ask the user before doing so.

AutoFill information can be managed in the Chrome options, by clicking on the Tools icon in the Chrome header and then Options. The Form AutoFill button is listed on the Personal Stuff tab.

There, all addresses that have been entered are listed, with the option to edit them directly in the interface to add, remove or edit parts of the address.

chrome form autofill

edit address chrome

Credit card information are not displayed fully in plain text in the menu, only the last four digits and the expiration date are shown.

The same menu contains a checkbox to disable autofill in Google Chrome (by unchecking enable AutoFill to fill out web forms in a single click). The feature in its current form is not supporting the addition of custom fields in an address set, something that our favorite password manager extension Last Pass – which is also available for Google Chrome – supports.

The latest Chrome beta release can be downloaded via the Google Chrome Releases blog post.

If you do that regularly this becomes a tedious time consuming process. I like to automate stuff like that. Autofill Forms is a Firefox extension that lets you fill out web forms with the click of the mouse / pressing a keyboard shortcut. It is possible to create profiles in case that you are using more than one identity on the Internet or use the extension for work and spare time.

You can fill out a lot of variables like name, username, street, city, phone and several others with the option to add new ones to that list or edit existing fields. This is important because the extension uses possible form field names to identify forms on the website.

By default it assigns the birthday to forms that have the name byear, birthyear, birth-year or dob-year. It would be possible to add ‘date of birth’ to that list and every other phrase that comes to your mind.

It is possible to set rule priorities and add site specific rules. Profiles can be exported which is excellent if you work with different computers. The default keyboard shortcut for filling out a form is ALT + J.

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Autofill Forms