Question

I have an input field:

<input name="Name" value="Enter Your Name">

How would I get it to remove the pre-defined text (Enter Your Name) when the user clicks the box.

As far as I am aware Javascript is the best way to do this. If that wrong please inform me.

Answer 1

HTML5 Placeholder Attribute

You are likely wanting placeholder functionality:

<input name="Name" placeholder="Enter Your Name" />

Polyfill for Older Browsers

This will not work in some older browsers, but polyfills exist (some require jQuery, others don’t) to patch that functionality.

“Screw it, I’ll do it myself.”

If you wanted to roll your own solution, you could use the onfocus and onblur events of your element to determine what its value should be:

<input name="Name" value="Enter Your Name"
       onfocus="(this.value == 'Enter Your Name') && (this.value = '')"
       onblur="(this.value == '') && (this.value = 'Enter Your Name')" />

Avoid Mixing HTML with JavaScript

You’ll find that most of us aren’t big fans of evaluating JavaScript from attributes like onblur and onfocus. Instead, it’s more commonly encouraged to bind this logic up purely with JavaScript. Granted, it’s a bit more verbose, but it keeps a nice separation between your logic and your markup:

var nameElement = document.forms.myForm.Name;

function nameFocus( e ) {
  var element = e.target || window.event.srcElement;
  if (element.value == "Enter Your Name") element.value = "";
}

function nameBlur( e ) {
  var element = e.target || window.event.srcElement;
  if (element.value == "") element.value = "Enter Your Name";
}

if ( nameElement.addEventListener ) {
  nameElement.addEventListener("focus", nameFocus, false);
  nameElement.addEventListener("blur", nameBlur, false);
} else if ( nameElement.attachEvent ) {
  nameElement.attachEvent("onfocus", nameFocus);
  nameElement.attachEvent("onblur", nameBlur);
}

Demo: http://jsbin.com/azehum/2/edit