How can I disable the spell checker on text inputs on the iPhone

Question

Sometimes the spell checker is unnecessary, captchas, usernames, emails, etc. Is there a way disable it on some text inputs/text areas?

Answer 1

Actually there is literally a spell check attribute in HTML5:

<textarea spellcheck="false">

Re: http://blog.whatwg.org/the-road-to-html-5-spellchecking

Browser support is, of course, limited.

Answer 2

As noted by my buddy Jonathan Stark, you should be able to use attributes like autocorrect and autocomplete to achieve the effect you're looking for:

<input type="text" placeholder="My Field" name="myfield"
    autocapitalize="none" autocorrect="off" autocomplete="off" />

Just tested in OS4 and it's working.

UPDATE: As of iOS5 on and off values in autocapitalize have been deprecated. Use none to completely disable automatic capitalization.