[whatwg] Hide placeholder on input controls on focus

[Markus Ernst]

Am 18.03.2013 13:27 schrieb Boris Zbarsky:
> On 3/18/13 5:31 AM, Markus Ernst wrote:
>> - Opera and Safari hide it when the field gets focus
>
> The behavior of Safari here is platform-dependent or possibly
> version-dependent.  Safari 6 on Mac doesn't hide the placeholder until
> you start typing.
>
>> ...when the element's value is the empty string _and_ the control is not
>> focused, e.g. by displaying ...
>
> I believe the spec used to say this and got changed.  Certainly the
> Gecko implementation did this and got changed.  It's worth looking into
> why the changes were made before simply trying to revert them.

I had searched the list archives for "placeholder" before posting, but 
of course I may have missed the relevant discussion. I did not search 
Firefox bugs, though.

A reason for the behaviour of Firefox and Chrome may be that some user 
may not have read the placeholder text before focusing the control. 
Anyway, if this behavior lets some users think they can't even fill in 
the form, there must be something wrong about it. Maybe some implementer 
may want to include this case in their usability tests; I do not insist 
in discussing it at spec level.


Am 18.03.2013 17:47 schrieb Tim Streater:
 > I for one find this to be extremely irritating. Workaround I was 
given by some kind person:
 >
 > [placeholder]:focus::-webkit-input-placeholder
 >       {
 >
 >       color:     transparent;
 >
 >       }

Yes, from an author's POV  I could also imagine scripting solutions to 
this case. Anyway it looks like a more general UI question to me.