InformAction Forums

I sometimes fill out a form, click submit, and nothing happens. Then I find the proper domain to enable in NoScript. Then the page reloads, and the form is cleared, so I have to fill it out again. Not all forms have this problem, so it must have something to do with the way they are implemented.

I don't know if this is possible, but I would like to see NoScript detect this type of auto-clearing form and pop up a warning to enable Javascript before filling out the form.

AFAIK, the way NoScript reloads the page when scripting is allowed already is designed to the best of its ability to preserve the fields. My experience has been this way as long as I have used it, HOWEVER, there are occasions that it will clear but I believe that to be a server side or form specific clearing based on how they create it and it has nothing to do with NoScript. Unfortunately there is no fool proof way to know in advance if the developer has written a crap code that will reset or not. Ultimately I will let Giorgio weigh in on this but this was my two cents based on my experience.

Right - I understand NoScript can't solve the issue of poorly coded sites. I was just hoping it might be able to _detect_ the sites with the problem and give the user a warning notice so they don't forget to enable javascript on the site before starting to fill out the form.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no way to evaluate the page content for whether or not it will keep or discard the content but again maybe Giorgio has a trick, we'll see. I will ask him to take a look here and comment.

Unfortunately there's no sure-fire way to detect which forms will be erased and which not, sorry

Direct from the man himself, as promised. Unfortunately same as I said before, there is no way to know and that's confirmed. Sorry, I was hoping I was wrong, although I was pretty sure I wouldn't be. I would suggest to be on the safe side, when you reach a form, BEFORE you fill it, take care of allowing all the needed scripts before continuing, that's what I do.

You might be able to hunt down another addon that will help to preserve form data, though. Not sure if Lazarus would help?

There is actually an addon called Lazarus but there was some discussion over privacy concerns regarding the monitoring, capturing and storing of the form content, not sure how that was resolved. I used it myself for a while, found it reasonably ok, but not worth the hassle sometimes, and the privacy concern was something I wasn't happy with either. But yeah if willing, there is a tool for it.