Temporarily save the content of text forms

[RShep33]

I think it happened to a lot of us: you take some time to fill a form, or a post on a forum, or a long comment. Then, you hit the wrong key combination (for example, you press "Tab" and then "Backspace"), and move to another page. Or, the antivirus decides to run an update and reboot your PC. Or, you took too long to fill the form and you lose everything that you typed so far.

It can turn into paranoid behaviours to open a Word document to copy and paste the long text you typed, "just in case".

Some websites (like this one) actually saves the content you type in your account, so that it saves the content as a draft. But it's not the case for most websites.

What if the browser automatically regularly saved the content typed in a form (e.g. every 30 seconds)? This content could be suggested by a header in the text box ("Firefox retrieved text from a previous session. Click here to restore it."), or, more discretely, could be restored by right-clicking on the text box and clicking on "Restore previously entered text".

Of course, any saved text would be deleted by cleaning the browsing history, or after a session in a private window.

Here is an idea of what it would look like with the header in the text box:

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[ludarp]

Make form data be retrievable if a page is accidentally reloaded (CTRL+R)

Firefox is extremely resilient to most accidental keypresses: after browsing away, closing a tab, closing the whole browser or a system crash - the form data can generally be retrieved.

Why then, is there no way to "get back" your work after you accidentally knock Ctrl+R?

(I lost a day's work from this keypress. Although the write-up was only a few hours, it was the culmination of a few day's thinking.)

In fact I learned a lot about computer forensics trying to retrieve this! But alas, it seems to be completely gone - poof! out of memory, and all cache / db files, without a trace.

[Jon]

(Note: similar ideas have been merged into this thread)

[ludarp]

In the Dvorak keyboard layout, C and R are located next to each other making Ctrl+R particularly dangerous (it can be hit when trying to copy, Ctrl+C).

Interestingly I more frequently hit Ctrl+W instead of Ctrl+V (closing a tab instead of pasting) - fortunately for this one, the form data is easily recovered. (Ctrl+Shift+T)

[PurpleDeceiver]

I found myself here while trying to find such an option.

I'm a forum moderator and lots of members lose their input - across browsers including phones and tablets. And they regularly cry about what they have lost. These are often members with extremely limited IT experience and trying to suggest they prepare their text in a word processor and save it just doesn't work!