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.

Christian: We are collecting concerns at the moment.

Heather: not finished the review yet.

Heather: I wrote down my points and fed them to chatGPT to make them coherent. Is everyone ok with that?

Jeffrey: not sure as previous experiences were not ideal. I prefer to have another look from humans to ensure hallucinating or redundant content. There is a policy for it.

Matthew: I read through it and it does not seem odd (there are some pieces)

Heather: I had some issues about the race condition that could happen if there are conflicting items. I also have some points on the security and privacy. It needs expert review.

Jeffrey: the race condition already exists becsause browser autofill and this react to this in parallel. We are trying to make it better, but I can't say it is successfull.

Heather: I am not an implementor, but it seems like an issue to me.

Christian: I am very busy and I want to support heather but it is not possible in two weeks.

Heather: This one has quite a bit of commentary. Marcos and I met on Tuesday and I don't know that we're any closer to a final statement but there's quite a bit to consider. I'm not sure how to take it to next steps without having him around to discuss.

Lola: There may be enough for a draft comment, do you feel like there is?

Heather: I'm unsure.

Lola: identifies comments from GH which can be pulled into draft comment Does that sound actionable?

Heather: Yes!

Christian: Heather is on this, and was collecting concerns.

Marcos: Think we are waiting for Matthew for a11y considerations. We think it’s quite problematic from that standpoint.

Matthew: I’ve been following this. I think there were good a11y questions to raise. Acknowledge the concerns around interoperability. Don’t have any additional/specific concerns to add.

Luke: (Comment on a11y/interoperability).

Lola: Would encourage you to post that comment. (https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews-private-brainstorming/issues/252)

closed

Christian: This should not be closed, we are asking for feedback.

Marcos: Right, it should stay open.

Hadley: Ok, will reopen it.

Matthew: I added the "waiting for external feedback" label.

Christian: And then we should wait for the proponents to respond.

Hadley: Will reach out to Heather that say that we've done this.