Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Make Firefox Remember Passwords

Some web sites can include special tag (such as the: autocomplete='off') in their pages to tell browsers not to remember passwords for that site (for example, Gmail and Yahoo Mail). Most browsers honor this tag, and don't ask if you want to remember a password for that site even if you have this feature turned on.

This can be annoying if you rely on this feature to help you quickly move from web site to web site without having to remember different user names, and passwords. Well, I was frustrated and found a solution to my problem.

There is a bookmarklet (its a bookmark with some JavaScript in it) that allows you to reset this tag on the web page to allow your browser to remember the password for a site. This bookmarklet has worked pretty well for me the few times I have used it.

To install this bookmarklet, I would suggest dragging it to your bookmark link bar and leaving it there. Then to use it, when you go to a page that won't allow you to remember the login password, just click on the bookmarklet before you enter your password.

For your shopping convenience, I have included the bookmarklet here. Just drag the link to your bookmark toolbar and let go.

Notes:
  • This bookmarklet won't work on every site.
  • If you're going to use the passwords autocomplete feature in your browser, it is highly recommended that you password protect it.
  • Never store passwords to sites that contain financial, or confidential information using the password autocomplete feature. You never know how good the encryption is used to store the passwords.

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