3 HTML5 Input Attributes To Help Mobile Users

Do you feel the pain?😫📱

• When your phone changes the first letter to an uppercase straight after you've typed the first letter?
• When your phone auto corrects the word as it thinks it spelt incorrectly?
• When your username is marked as being misspelt with a red squiggly line?

If any of the above have frustrated you in the past, then you need to be a good citizen / developer and make sure you use these attributes within your projects.

• autocapitalize
• autocorrect
• spellcheck

Note: These attributes only apply to input tags with the type text, email or textarea tags.

autocapitalize

This attribute when set to none stops browsers trying to help the user by auto-capitalizing words.

<input type="text" autocapitalize="none" />

autocorrect

This attribute when set to off stops iOS from auto correcting words when typed into a text box. Commonly this attribute is switched off for a username field. i.e. A random string that isn't in the dictionary and shouldn't be auto corrected.

<input type="text" autocorrect="off" />

spellcheck

This attribute when set to false stops browsers highlighting when a word has been misspelt with a underline.

<input type="text" spellcheck="false" />

Putting It All Together

Below is an example of how a sign in form could use the attributes to make it easier for mobile users.

<form>
    <label for="username">Username</label>
    <input id="username" name="username" type="text" autocapitalize="none" autocorrect="false" spellcheck="false" />
    <label for="password">Password</label>
    <input id="password" name="password" type="password" />
    <button type="submit">Sign In</button>
</form>

Comments

[Tiamiyu Sikiru Abidemi]

Wonderful hints, I will definitely include them in my next project

[Carl Saunders]

I've just implemented an ESLint plugin that caters for the above mentioned rules. Find out more by reading the following article dev.to/deadlybyte/eslint-plugin-fo....

The plugin can be downloaded from NPM - eslint-plugin-jsx-form.

[Alan Montgomery]

This could be a big help in future projects for me. Thank you! As you say, it's the simple things.

[Carl Saunders]

Awesome, simple quick wins are the best!

[Stephen Chiang]

I really wish the standard was to manually turn these things on rather than off...

[ComputerSmiths]

Thank you! This drives me nuts, and is especially evil on systems where username case is significant. (I agree that username should never be case-sensitive, but sometimes it is...)

[Carl Saunders]

No worries, it's these simple changes that can make our lives that much easier.