Background text in input type text

Question

Here is how you can get a placeholder using HTML5:

<input id="textfield" name="textfield" type="text" placeholder="enter something" />

EDIT:

I no longer recommend hacking together your own polyfills as I showed below. You should use Modernizr to first detect whether a polyfill is needed in the first place, and then activate a polyfill library that fits your needs. There is a good selection of placeholder polyfills listed in the Modernizr wiki.

ORIGINAL (contd):

And here is a polyfill for compatibility:

<input id="textfield" name="textfield" type="text" value="enter something" onfocus="if (this.value == 'enter something') {this.value = '';}" onblur="if (this.value == '') {this.value = 'enter something';}">

http://jsfiddle.net/q3V4E/1/

A better shim approach is to run this script on page load, and put your placeholders in the data-placeholder attribute, so your markup looks like this:

<input id="textfield" name="textfield" type="text" data-placeholder="enter something">

and your js looks like this:

var inputs = document.getElementsByTagName("input");
for (var i = 0; i < inputs.length; i++) {
    inputs[i].value = inputs[i].getAttribute('data-placeholder');
    inputs[i].addEventListener('focus', function() {
        if (this.value == this.getAttribute('data-placeholder')) {
            this.value = '';
        }
    });
    inputs[i].addEventListener('blur', function() {
        if (this.value == '') {
            this.value = this.getAttribute('data-placeholder');
        }
    });
}

http://jsfiddle.net/q3V4E/4/

HTML5 provides a placeholder attribute that addresses this particular issue. See this link for more information (JSFiddle)

<input type="text" placeholder="insert your name" />

You can always provide a non-HTML5 javascript fallback, like the one explained here, or in None jquery placeholder fallback? if you aren't using JQuery.

I think you are looking for HTML5 form field placeholder... :)

http://webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/cross-browser-html5-placeholder-text

The jquery version of the non-html 5 accepted answer:

    var inputs = $("input[type='text']", context);
    $.each(inputs, function (i, obj) {
        $(obj).val($(obj).attr('data-placeholder'));
        $(obj).on('focus', function () {
            if ($(this).val() == $(this).attr('data-placeholder')) {
                $(this).val('');
            }
        });
        $(obj).on('blur', function () {
            if ($(this).val() == '') {
                $(this).val($(this).attr('data-placeholder'));
            }
        });
    });

Changing the color of the placeholder can be achieved with CSS:

::-webkit-input-placeholder { /* Chrome/Opera/Safari */
  color: pink;
}
::-moz-placeholder { /* Firefox 19+ */
  color: pink;
}
:-ms-input-placeholder { /* IE 10+ */
  color: pink;
}
:-moz-placeholder { /* Firefox 18- */
  color: pink;
}

Source: https://css-tricks.com/almanac/selectors/p/placeholder/