for the record

i hate it when i type a lot of stuff into a web form and then click submit and then it says that my password has expired and then i enter the password and then everything is lost.

it SUCKS

and it just happened to me, while i was filling out profile stuff at http://www.couchsurfing.com, which is a brilliant idea for a website, and i might just have more to say about it as a travel planning tool before too long, if i ever forgive it for eating my story about snow on red square and my summary of the importance of IT and my reading list and my desire to learn to sail better and my link to the new best way to fold a t-shirt (thanks to erik for that particular addition to my corpus of knowledge).

we just need some time apart first.
i’m sure we will be able to work it out if it’s really meant to be.

in the meantime, though, what are people’s thoughts on the best ways to deal with the form-clearing problem, both from the developer side and the user side?

i always feel relieved when i hit back and then the text is all still there, but from the security standpoint, this seems less than optimal.
it would be nice if it checked to see if you were logged in when you hit submit and then warned you before it left the page forever.
or, of course, it could just do a good job of saving the data and redirecting you to the right page.
but in the meantime, while the world is still imperfect, what should we do?
a browser extension that temporarily saves the data for you?
does that already exist? like that time i invented the thermos?

i guess i could just do a better job of keeping all of the things i could ever want anyone to know updated here, and then give links.
because entering that shiznit in a bajillion times is what i Really hate.
this is why all of my profiles everywhere are boring as sin.
but that’s another problem.
it will have to wait until after dinner.

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