[whatwg] Customize HTML5 forms placeholder style

Ashley Sheridan ash at ashleysheridan.co.uk
Mon Feb 22 03:10:04 PST 2010


On Mon, 2010-02-22 at 11:08 +0000, Dean Edwards wrote:

> On 22 February 2010 01:18, Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky at mit.edu> wrote:
> > On 2/21/10 7:11 PM, Dean Edwards wrote:
> >>
> >> Why not just extend :empty to include <input> with no value?
> >
> > Because that's not backwards-compatible and in fact violates the current CSS
> > spec?
> >
> >> It reads nicely:
> >>
> >> input[required]:empty:after {
> >> content: "This value is required";
> >> color: red;
> >> }
> >
> > 1)  :after is not defined for replaced elements (which <input> is).
> > Conforming CSS2.1 user agents do a variety of things here, ranging from not
> > rendering such content at all to making it a sibling of the thing being
> > styled instead of a child.
> 
> Fair enough. Ignore the :after example.
> 
> > 2)  input[required]:empty is defined to match any input which has an
> > attribute named "required" and no kids in the DOM.  It does NOT match an
> > input which has kids in the DOM.
> >
> > So today, input[required]:empty would match:
> >
> >  <input required value="This is some value">
> >
> > in an HTML document and would not match the perfectly doable
> >
> >  <input required="required" value="This is some value">
> >    And some random text, too
> >  </input>
> >
> > in an XHTML document.
> >
> > Unless this is in fact a proposal to completely redefine how :empty matching
> > works in some backwards-incompatible way?  Is there evidence that this won't
> > break existing consumers?
> >
> 
> Yes, I'm suggesting redefining how :empty works. For elements that
> cannot have children it could mean having no content. e.g. An <input>
> with no value or an <img> with no src.
> 
> It gets around the need for a new :placeholder pseudo-class:
> 
> input[placeholder]:empty {
>   color: red;
> }
> 
> There is a small chance that it could break some pages I guess. If
> people are using *:empty than it may start matching some <input>
> elements.
> 
> I always wanted a pseudo-class that could match <input> with no value.
> Extending :empty is probably a bad idea but something like :no-value
> would be useful.
> 
> -dean


:default might be better, as :no-value would fall over where you use a
default value in an input box, unless you use :no-value there too, but
that would just not make sense.

Thanks,
Ash
http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk


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