Autofill v8.4.0 released

[thdoan]

This release sees one major enhancement: you can now select a field to autofill using a CSS selector :). There is also better support for Google Forms.

Changelog:

• Added support for 'aria-label' attribute
  
• Added support for Google Forms menus, checkboxes, and radio buttons
  
• Added support for CSS selectors
  
• Improved rule generation code
  
• Rewrote icon badge count reset code
  
• Fixed password field saved as Text rule
  
• Fixed Uncaught TypeError on Google Forms
  

[renan...@gmail.com]

Hello!

I use it dayly on this site: https://internetbanking.caixa.gov.br/sinbc/#!nb/login

and After this update it stop working.

[Renan Moro]

Just an update to help.

Now I have to fill the forms manually, by clicking on the icon. Before the forms was filled on page loading

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[eloisavi...@gmail.com]

i don't know what seems to be problem but the auto fill is not loading profiles that i select.. what should i do..

[Renan Moro]

I have the same problem here after this last update.

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[radon...@gmail.com]

What's the deal with the new permission? Why on earth would Autofill need to read my browsing history?

[dylan...@gmail.com]

Same question! Can't imagine why browsing history is suddenly required. See attached image

[thdoan]

The WebNavigation permission is required to reliably reset the icon badge count when you go to a new page (or reload the current page). Here is the actual code that is used:

chrome.webNavigation.onCommitted.addListener(handleNavigation);

// Handle web navigation
function handleNavigation(details) {
  if (details.frameId!==0) return;  // ignore subframes (iframes)
  resetCounters();
}

And that's the only new code related to this permission. Don't worry, Autofill is not tracking your browsing history. Also, if you monitor your http log you'll realize that Autofill is also not sending any data to anywhere, so it's completely local to your hard drive.

[dud...@gmail.com]

I used everyday on cp of my website to change orders to complete, but after this update, stopped working. When I first enter the page, its on picture 1, and the change occurs on picture 2, but it's not changing anymore, unless I rapidly click on "Historico" (picture 2) then the autofill triggers.

It's not another page, its just like this

/admin/#tab-order

/admin/#tab-history

even when I am at #tab-order, the "select box" could be changed in #tab-history, but this is not happening anymore after last update.

Em quarta-feira, 30 de maio de 2018 01:30:37 UTC-3, thdoan escreveu:

[thdoan]

Hi there, could you please check again when Autofill is updated to v8.4.2?

[dud...@gmail.com]

thank you so much, working 101%

[paule...@gmail.com]

Although I am technical enough to seek this explanation and even understand the code snippet provided, as well as your suggestion to monitor the http logs to determine whether the extension is leaking information, many of your users will not bother to look for an explanation if it is not immediately provided in the "What's New" release notes, let alone understand how to monitor the http log or even comprehend what that information means... I'm surprised you didn't even bother to explain the reason for the new permission at all in the release notes.

https://about.me/PaulMEdwards

[thdoan]

Thanks Paul, you make a good point. I will add an explanation to why the WebNavigation permission is required in the next update.

Cheers,

Tom

[paule...@gmail.com]

Sounds good, thanks Tom.

I've replied to a few such confused/concerned users on the extension's review tab pointing them to your explanation here... Hopefully that helps the few who bother to read it in the interim.

Cheers,

Paul

[paule...@gmail.com]

BTW, Google's own documentation on the Chrome Extensions API recommends explaining new permissions to users. It also discusses strategies to make certain permissions optional to potentially help ease users into such changes. ;-)

https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/permission_warnings

Paul

On Wednesday, May 30, 2018 at 7:21:00 PM UTC-7, thdoan wrote:

[thdoan]

I plan to add a new section below Privacy & Security in the next update (coming later today):

PERMISSIONS

The following permissions are required by this extension:

- contextMenus: add Autofill to the right-click context menu

- storage: store data on your hard drive

- unlimitedStorage: allow unlimited storage (without this permission you would only be able to store 5 MB of data)

- webNavigation: detect when a web page is loaded to reset the icon badge count (Autofill does not and will never track your browsing history)

Again, thanks for pointing this out. I guess when I was adding this feature it was such a minor edit that I didn't think to ponder the darker ramifications of this permission.

[paule...@gmail.com]

Looks good Tom, except I would recommend you list not only the specific API permission name such as "webNavigation" but also the plain description end users will see such as "Read your browsing history" on the same line so they can correlate the visible permission warning dialog with the underlying API permission and reason.

Cheers,

Paul

[thdoan]

Requiring webNavigation is the last thing I wanted (hence I've only added it after 8 years), but over the years people (including myself) would notice the icon badge count was not accurate in some cases, which is like an itch that you can't scratch. I've tried the following three solutions to reset the icon badge count when you navigate to a new page (or reload current page), but none of them were 100% reliable:

1. Reset counter on main page load: this worked in most cases, but in some cases a page would have an iframe that is loaded before the main page, so there would be a scenario where the counter would start to increment because fields in the iframe were being autofilled, then get reset to zero again when the main page is finished loading (i.e., if the main page has 10 autofilled fields and the iframe has 2 autofilled fields, then the badge count would incorrectly display 10 instead of 12).

2. Reset counter on main page + iframe load: this has the inverse problem of the first solution (if the main page has already started counting before an iframe finished loading, then the badge count would also be off).

3. Reset counter on 'beforeunload' event: this was the most promising solution, and it worked in all situations except for two: (1) when a page is opened in a popup window, e.g. clicking Preview in Google Forms; (2) when you duplicate the tab. This is because in these two cases 'beforeunload' event is never triggered.

In the end, I've concluded that the only sure way to reset the counter is to use Chrome's built-in webNavigation API. If I find a 100% reliable way to detect a page navigation without using the webNavigation API, then I will remove this permission.

[thdoan]

Ahh, after looking at this page I realized "Read and change all your data on the websites you visit" is caused by having "http://*/*" and "https://*/*", which means that this warning was given out since Autofill v1.0 I believe (yikes). If it were just the webNavigation permission, it would only give a "Read your browsing history" warning.

I'll try to find a way to not give any warnings at all in the next release by using their recommended activeTab permission and removing the webNavigation permission...

On Wednesday, May 30, 2018 at 7:59:07 PM UTC-7, pauledwards:

[thdoan]

I've been doing some tests, and it turns the Google documentation is not entirely accurate: after I removed ALL permissions from Autofill and reloaded the extension, it was still giving me the "Read and change all your data on the websites you visit" permissions warning. This got me scratching my head for awhile, until I also removed the content script from the extension (the reason for this extension's existence) and the warning finally went away.

So not only permissions can show warnings, but content scripts will automatically show the "Read and change all your data on the websites you visit" warning as well, which I guess makes sense since they are responsible for modifying the web page (e.g., autofilling form fields). Oh well, I can't really do anything about this except give a good reason why it's required.

[Bencze]

I am one of the concerned simple users.

I am not a coder but I tried to do a search in the extension code for these parts, although I can still not be 100% sure what it does and I also don't really want to dig code whenever weird permission requests pop up.

While I hope you don't take it personal I am sure you can see the irony in the "don't worry" message nowadays, the one thing common in a lone dev, a company or a governmental organization is that such a message doesn't really offer any assurances from anyone.

I personally don't really understand this icon badge count (although I only use autofill for 1 site, 1 rule, so I don't know what count would show where, perhaps on the icon itself) but it doesn't seem like a feature that would be required for the core functionality. It may be useful but probably not necessary for the autofill function which would mean in my view that the minimum required permission principle is not applied.

It is perhaps not the biggest concern with google's permission management system that we have which is still pretty great for exploiting personal data, but this situation was something I cared for enough to post my point of view here, as a self-proclaimed representative of the stupid users that are bothered by this but generally don't come here :) 

I personally don't require further explanation, it would also probably be wasted time so I don't need to be "convinced", I just posted here because I think it would be great for a lot of people if some different solution would be used, if privacy is a concern of course. I don't know how many people actually care so I don't know if it is "worth it", that's a determination you'll need to make.

thanks

[thdoan]

Yes, I hear your concern, and I will add a description of the permissions and their warnings in the next update. The warning given by the new webNavigation permission ("read your browsing history") is not nearly as evil sounding as the warning given off by a permission that was present since version 1 ("read and change all your data on the websites you visit"), which is the warning you get when an extension is using what is called a "content script", basically a script that runs on every page that can modify the page (what Autofill does, the same with any other extension that uses content scripts, e.g. ad blockers). I think the reason why more people are jumping up over this is because of all the privacy & security concerns that weren't there when Autofill was first released in 2010, especially now that Chrome disables the extension and splashes that warning in your face when you go back to re-enable it :|.