Form input text lost

With most web browsers (including firefox) it's very easy to lose changes to a form before the form is submitted and data is saved. The classic example, is hours spent on writing a new page, article or blog post, then the browser or OS crashes, a user navigates to another page, and they can't find their unsaved content. Even if the browser has saved the form state somewhere, it's difficult for many users to find it after navigating away from the page.

Further, many users now expect applications to autosave their work, as Google Docs and most desktop office-ware does. They believe that they don't have to manually save everything every minute anymore.

Autosave module autosaves nodes and/or forms and probably much of the code would be re-usable in core. It's important that the solution be able to auto-save ANY fAPI form (not just node forms) and it would be nice if it can work on multiple forms in one page – although that isn't necessary for it to solve this usability issue for most cases. Autosave module has various branches. See #156036: Wrong approach. Should save forms, not nodes - Proof of Concept for some clarity as to what they are for.