[whatwg] Placeholder option for text input boxes

Tab Atkins Jr. jackalmage at gmail.com
Fri Oct 3 08:05:01 PDT 2008


On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 9:32 AM, Garrett Smith <dhtmlkitchen at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 4:34 PM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 6:27 PM, Brenton Strine <
> Brenton.Strine at citrix.com>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 11:36 AM, Andy Lyttle <whatwg at phroggy.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Of course, it's still not in any way semantic.  The only difference
> between
> > "(optional)" being displayed near the input and being displayed *within*
> the
> > input is one of aesthetics.   The meaning of the document isn't changed
> one
> > iota.  This leans me even more toward a CSS solution.  I'll just bite the
> > bullet and bring it up to the CSS WG.
> >
>
> Are you proposing that placeholder could be a positioned object, such
> as an image?


Not entirely sure what you're suggesting here, but maybe?  My suggestion was
put forward up above - I would prefer if the placeholder text was replaced
content.  You set a CSS rule (haven't decided the best way to handle this
yet) that suppresses the display of a label and instead uses the textual
content of the label as a placeholder.

Using an image as a placeholder is interesting, though.  I know that Google
custom search does that sometimes.  However, I'm fine with leaving that to
Javascript for now, as image placeholders aren't an accessibility concern
like the placeholder-instead-of-label issue is.  As well, it's still a
minority technique compared to text placeholders.

~TJ
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