There are a few methods to get around autocomplete=off in a website’s forms.  One is to permanently disable the feature in firefox that checks for this tag.

Permanently disable the feature in FF

- Navigate to the “components” folder in the firefox installation directory (default for windows: C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\).
- Open “nsLoginManager.js” in notepad or some other simple text editor.
- Find the function “_isAutoCompleteDisabled”, and comment the lines out by adding two forward slashes before each line (see below).

/*
* _isAutoCompleteDisabled
*
* Returns true if the page requests autocomplete be disabled for the
* specified form input.
*/
_isAutocompleteDisabled :  function (element) {
//        if (element && element.hasAttribute(“autocomplete”) &&
//            element.getAttribute(“autocomplete”).toLowerCase() == “off”)
//            return true;

return false;
},

- Save and close the file, and restart firefox.

Javascript Method

The second method is to use a ‘bookmarklet’ that  runs some javascript that does this for you.  There a many of these available, but here is an example:

javascript:(function(){var%20ca,cea,cs,df,dfe,i,j,x,y;function%20n(i,what){return%20i+”%20″+what+((i==1)?”":”s”)}ca=cea=cs=0;df=document.forms;for(i=0;i<df.length;++i){x=df[i];dfe=x.elements;if(x.onsubmit){x.onsubmit=”";++cs;}if(x.attributes["autocomplete"]){x.attributes["autocomplete"].value=”on”;++ca;}for(j=0;j<dfe.length;++j){y=dfe[j];if(y.attributes["autocomplete"]){y.attributes["autocomplete"].value=”on”;++cea;}}}alert(“Removed%20autocomplete=off%20from%20″+n(ca,”form”)+”%20and%20from%20″+n(cea,”form%20element”)+”,%20and%20removed%20onsubmit%20from%20″+n(cs,”form”)+”.%20After%20you%20type%20your%20password%20and%20submit%20the%20form,%20the%20browser%20will%20offer%20to%20remember%20your%20password.”)})();

Bookmarklet

{Credit squarefree for javascript function}

You can either copy and paste this in your URL bar, or save the script as a bookmark.  When you come upon a site that you can’t save a password for, use the code above, then login as normal, and you should see the option to save the password.

This was tested in Firefox 3.0.10, and worked great.