OK this is pretty trivial and some might argue it's a feature rather than a bug...but when I log in from an iPad or iPhone, but not a Mac, using the Apple web browser the username login field automatically capitalizes the first character. Since it is a case sensitive field I'm constantly tripping over this and getting a login failure the first try.

Pretty sure this is a server side thing. Thanks for listening!

Hi, it's not a server side thing at all. It comes from your keyboard settings. All the smartphones have a default keyboard who capitalises the first letter of each sentence.

Don't have a iphone, but on my android phone if i want to remove that :

settings
language & keyboard
android keyboard
and just uncheck the auto-capitalisation option

Edit :

on iphone :

1. Select Settings from the Home screen.

2. Select General.

3. Select Keyboard.

4. Turn Auto-Capitalization to on or off.

Usernames are not case-sensitive for logging-in purposes here but passwords are. For example, I can type "bluToblutaRSKY" so long as I enter my password exactly as I set it and it lets me in.

I think I know what is happening. Is there another site where your username is Neurosynth with a capital 'N'? If so, you need to read DogsAfire's post here on why this is happening and how to solve it (in Firefox, at least). Basically it's auto-filling the capitalised username (which doesn't matter) and the different password (which obviously does) from the other site, which is why you can't log in here initially.

In any event, it can't really be a server side thing since the behaviour is not exhibited in all browsers. We don't have special code for handling requests from mobile devices; everyone gets served the same pages. However I do not have an iPhone, iPad or any smartphone, so I can't replicate this on my own. Try larotule's suggestion... if I'm right about what is happening and then you turn off auto-capitalisation, your browser should pull the stored password for ignatz and not the other site, successfully logging you in on the first try.

Apparently this default behavior can be controlled from both sides:

http://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-first-l ... es-its-not

However if I turn auto caps off they are off for everything. Only the server side can selectively turn them off on a field by field basis. Not that I'd expect you to do major surgery if it isn't easy and obvious how to make the change.

Ah, I see. Okay, that site says:

I researched this a bit as I was not too familiar with it (we don't use it here). So, the "autocapitalize" feature is not standard HTML/XHTML (i.e. it does not conform to W3C standards); it's not a valid attribute for the "input" tag. Apple's developer documentation indicates that it's an "Apple Extension." The fact that autocapitalize is set to "on" by default seems nuts to me. I can't imagine wanting that to be the default behaviour!! Do you think it makes things easier for people typing on touchscreens? I hate touchscreens and never use them (don't have a smartphone, don't want one) so I really have no concept of what it's like to spend any significant time on Ignatzmice using an iPhone, iPad or whatever else.

I could easily just change some templates to include the extra "autocapitalize" attribute set to "off." I choose not to because it would mean the pages I change would no longer pass the W3C validator (I took great pains to bring as many pages up to compliance as I could when I created the new phpBB3 templates to preserve the look of our old phpBB2 board). I take exception to Apple's approach here, nudging developers to deviate from the standard by introducing unexpected/undesirable behaviour like this when the developer chooses not to implement Apple's proprietary, invalid markup.

Incidentally, Microsoft has long been vilified for doing this exact same thing, ignoring accepted standards and adding their own extensions to Internet Explorer, which rightly brought accusations of anti-competitive conduct. Apple, on the other hand, will probably be seen as "innovative."

Can you install a browser other than Safari on an iPad or an iPhone? If so, that's what I would recommend doing. I don't consider this a server side issue at all since the sole cause of it is Apple's broken implementation of HTML on their mobile devices. It's a client side issue and a slap in the face to those of us who attempt to write code/markup that works consistently well for the greatest number of people, by following the standards. Apple is the new Microsoft.

didn't realize autocapitalize="off" is non-standard. But I do think it's a good idea as mobile devices become more popular. However I can entirely understand not wanting to use non-standard stuff. I think what Apple is doing here is defensible to the extent that it doesn't break browsers or sites that don't use it or don't support it. (Unlike, say, some of the Microsoft extensions way back when.) But yeah, it will trip validation errors.

It looks like tablets will be catching up to laptops in terms of sheer numbers so little things like auto-capitalize will become more important. On a physical keyboard you can type a capital letter almost as quickly as lower case. On a touch screen it takes two or three clicks (cap-letter or cap-letter-uncap). Beyond that, and speculation on my part, I think it requires a sort of mental stutter. Shift-letter "feels" like a character where as cap-letter feels like a formatting command then a character. It's a little thing but Apple has demonstrated over the years that the synergy of these little things can result in a significant difference.

I see that it has been proposed for HTML5. So if it's adopted as standard there, and if we ever upgrade the site to HTML5 (we're talking years from now, if it even makes sense to do it then), then I'll gladly add it.

Aha, that makes sense. Apple is pushing HTML5 in part to knock down Flash.