Is there a way to tell Firefox not to remember the state of my input fields on page refresh?

Question

Firefox has a very annoying feature. It remembers the state of input fields when you hit F5. It's not just the value, it remembers even whether the input is disabled or not.

Example:

<html>
    <head>
         <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.0/jquery.min.js"></script>
    </head>
    <body>
        <input type="text" value="textbox" />
        <a href="#" onclick="javascript: $('input').attr('disabled', true); return false; " >Disable text box</a>
    </body>
</html>

The code above has an anchor that, when clicked, disables the text input field. After that, Firefox will remember the state after F5 and the only way to restore it to the original is to hit enter on the address bar.

Is there a meta tag or something to make FF stop doing that?

EDIT

Actually browsers have different behaviors. Firefox is the most annoying. Firefox remembers the input value and whether it's disabled or not. IE8 remembers the value and Chrome doesn't remember anything

Just remove the 'disabled' attribute on page load, like this: `$('input').removeAttr('disabled');` — Viruzzo, Nov 29 '11 at 13:42
For those interested, here's the bug about this (please don't comment there with "please fix this"): https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=654072 — Nickolay, Nov 29 '11 at 21:29
What it looks like is that 8 years after the bug report was opened, it has not been fixed. — , Apr 20 '19 at 16:56

score 31 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 27 '22 at 10:46

31

You can set the element or the form to autocomplete="off" to disable state preservation, but that also disables input autocomplete, of course.

edited Jan 27 '22 at 10:46

Kissaki

8,810
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answered Nov 29 '11 at 22:38

Boris Zbarsky

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1

Chrome is also the same, and if you use the back button with input fields with `autocomplete=off` they'll be blank – Chris S Nov 25 '13 at 23:45
Works great, thx! It looks like Mozilla & Google hired someone from Microsoft to work on it – Michał Kutra Jan 14 '16 at 08:52

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 29 '11 at 13:33

2

I do think all browsers have that feature.

But to reset your input to its original value, try this.

$('document').ready(function(){//or whenever you want to fire back to the default value
    $('input#withanidplease').val($('input#withanidplease').prop('defaultValue'))
})

answered Nov 29 '11 at 13:33

Fredy31

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Actually browsers have different behaviors. Firefox is the most annoying. Firefox remembers the input value and whether it's disabled or not. IE8 remembers the value and Chrome doesn't remember anything. Thank you for your reply but I'm really after a solution that does't involve JavaScript – Andre Pena Nov 29 '11 at 13:37
Ok. For common knowledge: No javascript, or no JQuery? because in your example you use some Javascript. – Fredy31 Nov 29 '11 at 13:48

score -3 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 29 '11 at 13:39

-3

try this:

<a href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="javascript: $('input').attr('disabled', true); return false; " >Disable text box</a>

answered Nov 29 '11 at 13:39

Waqas Mehmood

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score -3 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 01 '11 at 20:15

-3

Based on the scripting language you are using, you may try to disable caching.

answered Dec 01 '11 at 20:15

user935581

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1

Is there anyone that's using something else besides javascript in the browser, I wonder...? – Ioannis Karadimas Jan 04 '12 at 13:38

Is there a way to tell Firefox not to remember the state of my input fields on page refresh?

4 Answers4

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