bonehead

Just downloaded Firefox 3. Good app. But I use a MacBook and would prefer to use Safari. But the damn browser won't save passwords for all of the sites that I visit. It'll ask to 'Remember' passwords for some but not for others. I set it in my prefs but it still doesn't work. I just got fed up and started using Firefox.

Any Apple gurus out there that can help a brotha out?

Come to think of it, I also set it to open new websites in a new tab in the same window. But it always opens up a new window. Friggin' annoying! Any advice for this problem, too?

TIA

swajames

Safari autofill does tend to fall over if the site requires a secure connection (secure socket layer, https) or if the login and password request was somehow built in a "non standard" way. Definitely seems to be more of an issue in Safari 3 than it used to be in v2.

Either way, take a look at this: http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password

Works with Safari and Firefox, and goes way beyond the autofill capabilities of either. Should solve your problem.

Also take a look at SAFT: http://haoli.dnsalias.com/

theXman

I aint no guru, I hate Safari and use only Firefox, bro.

bonehead

Thanks swajames. It's not just secure connections thought. M5Board, for instance, doesn't work.

Thanks for the links. But I'm too cheap to pay for the first one If I have to pay for something to work correctly on Safari, I'll just use Firefox. As for the second, what is it?????

swajames

If I were you I'd just stick with Firefox too, particularly now with 3.0 on the scene. SAFT is a set of Safari extensions to add a bunch of additional features. One of them is an enhanced autofill which may help.

ImolaRedM

I used to be a HUGE Firefox fan and I still use it. But I have to admit that I'm finding myself using Safari more and more.

I think the main reason I've been moving away from FF is because I don't reboot my computer often. If I reboot once a month that would be rebooting often. I've found that my system becomes less stable with FF2 than when I run Safari. I'll have to give FF3 a try now that it has gone GM.

To stay on topic, I haven't had the PW problem unless the site explicitly prevents saving the PW. Are you using Safari on Windows or OS X? If OS X could be a keychain issue?

bonehead

OS X. Keychain? Please explain. I'm a Mac newb.

ImolaRedM

http://www.tuaw.com/2007/09/17/mac-101-keychain/

That should answer the Keychain question

swajames

Good point on on keychain, but I don't think it's the cause of the issue per se (although that is indeed where the passwords are stored) as the problem stops Safari from reaching out to Keychain in the first instance. If I have it right, this arises due to two non standard HTML extensions in Internet Explorer, autofill and autocomplete, which Apple has had to implement in WebCore for compatibility purposes. Either one can be set to on or off in the page properties, and if they are set to "off" (as with many financial websites) then autofill by default won't try to populate the form. I believe it's possible to get round it by stripping out the autofill and autocomplete entries before the page is rendered and autofill should work as normal or some browsers (such as OmniWeb) that let you set or force these properties on a site by site basis but both require some work. I think that's essentially what the utilities such as SAFT are doing to get around the limitation. Funny thing is that this really was much less of an issue in version 2, there must have been some "upgrade" in V3 which led to all these problems.

DRANGED

Ed, I can fix this problem for you. PM me all of your passwords and I'll take care of it.