> Autocomplete "bugs" abound aplenty

No, there's just the one "bug": browsers ignore autocomplete=off.

And, as you say, the browsers regard that not to be a bug, because when they honor developers request to prevent autocomplete, users keep filing bugs on the browsers, saying "why won't you autocomplete this??"

Put something descriptive in the autocomplete, instead of "off", and you're usually fine.

Consider the "State of HTML" survey of form pain points. https://2024.stateofhtml.com/en-US/features/forms/#forms_pai...

See also the "missing elements" section. https://2024.stateofhtml.com/en-US/usage/#html_missing_eleme...

An image cropper didn't make the list. Data table did! But it's pretty complicated, and, as I said, progress is slow. Partly that's for backwards compatibility reasons, and partly it's because you have to get Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla to all agree on anything, and that's really hard.

Autocomplete is on the list of pain points. But it's wayyy further down the list than having a customizable `<select>`. Styling & customization, validation, and `<input type=date>` are all bigger pain points than autocomplete.