Christian: this is interesting. The proposal wants to solve this: for example, if you change the country in a form due to an autofil request by the user ("fill in my personal data" in the browser), this may lead to a re-rendering of that form becasue address lines work differently across different countries. And if you re-render the form, the autofil content is lost. So they propsoe providing an event where you can programmatically trigger a refill after basically rearranging the form. Currently what web authoris do is they add all the forms inputs, make them hidden and then physically just move them around.

Sarven: I'm curious about this, concerns on the accesibility repainting or changing visibilitly of forms, values going missing. Were there a11y concerns to begin with with live-updating teh form ,I presume the web page is not updated, it's just a DOM update. Were concerns raised?

Christian: not yet. This is new, we've just started looking at this.

Luke: I wonder if the atomic move DOM operation somewhat solves this case? would rely on them using that for doing their rendering. you can move around elements in the DOM already. I'm wondering why the current solutions clear the autofill. Seems like getting rid of the entire form and re-rendering it, maybe it's not the best way of building the form in the first place.

Hadley: Have a suspicion, form may be structurally different after changing countries, for exmaple counties which are important in UK, but don't exist in American addresses. If you don't find the answer to your question in the explainer, we should ask.

Marcos: Just had a look at the API design. Because you have all of these hidden elements, you may fill in too much fields. Autofill has been around for a long time. Wonder what the privacy implications are, and if it makes the situation better, but suspect that the proponents from Shopify already thought about this. Anyway, these are my initial thoughts, need to check it in more detail.

Matthew: Generally very concerned about the privacy aspects of it. Think I’ve heard people saying that this is a legitimate use case. Seems like a very specific use case. Want to mention what Sarven asked about a11y. Think there’s nothing to this other than dynamic form. The best practice is that you shouldn’t change form fields that are above the current focus. Don't change forms the user has already filled in. Already covered by WCAG. I am pretty interested in this.

Sarven: Also, the browser still needs to differentiate between what is potentially autofillable vs. the parts that were autofilled in the form. The form may have autofilled a bunch of things. What happens if the user cleared an autofilled field and now the form is rebuilt and the field is refilled? To add to Matthew’s point, if it updates things prior to the current focus, they may even end up submitting the form with parts that they didn’t want to submit.

Hadley: +1 to that, this is a big worry. Wanted to say that solutions for very specific use cases can lead to making the big picture worse.

Marcos: Concern is that sites may block/disallow autofilling ("you must type your email"). This might do bad things.

Luke: that's already detectable to say.... there's stuff like the autofill pseudo element and studio class. which sites can use to detect the field being autofilled. so it would be new in that it's more easily script observable. Because I think you'd have to request annimation fram, matches check or something.

Marcos: WebKit actually types it in, letter by letter.

Luke: Also, validations. Might this work around validations?

Marcos: Really good input, we can try to bring all those aspects together. Need to check what the autocomplete attribute does.

Heather: This is what I asked about on Slack with Marcos and Christian, to see if they were doing what I thought they were doing.

Marcos: I haven't read this yet.

Heather: Marcos and Christian should absolutely be on the tech side of things; I'm particularly interested in the broader ramifications of how this might be used.

Marcos: Definitely raise points that don't make sense from a human perspective. they'll help all readers.