autocomplete ='off' is not working when the input type is password and make the input field above it to enable autocomplete

Question

I have an form with autocomplete disabled but it does not works and makes the autocomplete to be enabled in firefox and higher version of chrome

<form method="post" autocomplete="off" action="">
    <ul class="field-set">
    <li>
        <label>Username:</label>
        <input type="text" name="acct" id="username" maxlength="100" size="20">
    </li>
    <li>
        <label>Password:</label>
        <input type="password" name="pswd" id="password" maxlength="16" size="20" >
    </li>
    <li>
        <input type="submit" class="button" value="Login" id="Login" name="Login">
    </li>
    </ul>
</form>

When the type is changed from password to text it works in all browser. Can anyone help to solve this issue?

Answer 1

Browser's normally have two related yet different features regarding forms:

• Form auto-complete, where items of <input type="text"> type (and similar) collect typed values and offer them back in the form of a drop-down list.
  (It's a simple feature that works pretty well.)

• Password manager, where browser prompts to remember username/password combinations when it detects you've submitted a login form. When returning to the site, most browsers display available usernames in a drop-down box (Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer...) but some have a toolbar button (Opera). Also, Chrome highlights the fields in hard-coded yellow.
  (This depends on heuristics and might fail on certain pages.)

There's an edge case with forms tagged as autocomplete="off". What happens if it's a login form and the user has previously stored a username/password? Actually removing the password from the local database looks like inappropriate so probably no browser does so. (In fact, data from form auto-complete is not erased either.) Firefox decides to give power to the user: you have a password, so I'll let you use it. Chrome decides to give power to the site.