Question

Is there a freely available jQuery plugin that changes placeholder behavior to match HTML5 spec?

Before Focus

On Focus Good (Safari)

On Focus Bad (Chrome, Firefox)

You can what your browser does with this simple fiddle.

HTML5 draft spec says:

User agents should present this hint to the user, after having stripped line breaks from it, when the element’s value is the empty string and/or the control is not focused (e.g. by displaying it inside a blank unfocused control and hiding it otherwise).

The “/or” is new in current draft so I suppose that’s why Chrome and Firefox don’t support it yet. See WebKit bug #73629, Chromium bug #103025.

Answer 1

Stefano J. Attardi wrote a nice jQuery plugin that just does that.
It is more stable than Robert’s and also fades to a lighter grey when the field gets focused.

• See the demo page
• Grab it on GitHub
• Play with the fiddle

---

I modified his plugin to read placeholder attribute as opposed to manually creating a span.
This fiddle has complete code:

HTML

<input type="text" placeholder="Hello, world!">

JS

// Original code by Stefano J. Attardi, MIT license

(function($) {
    function toggleLabel() {
        var input = $(this);

        if (!input.parent().hasClass('placeholder')) {
            var label = $('<label>').addClass('placeholder');
            input.wrap(label);

            var span = $('<span>');
            span.text(input.attr('placeholder'))
            input.removeAttr('placeholder');
            span.insertBefore(input);
        }

        setTimeout(function() {
            var def = input.attr('title');
            if (!input.val() || (input.val() == def)) {
                input.prev('span').css('visibility', '');
                if (def) {
                    var dummy = $('<label></label>').text(def).css('visibility','hidden').appendTo('body');
                    input.prev('span').css('margin-left', dummy.width() + 3 + 'px');
                    dummy.remove();
                }
            } else {
                input.prev('span').css('visibility', 'hidden');
            }
        }, 0);
    };

    function resetField() {
        var def = $(this).attr('title');
        if (!$(this).val() || ($(this).val() == def)) {
            $(this).val(def);
            $(this).prev('span').css('visibility', '');
        }
    };

    var fields = $('input, textarea');

    fields.live('mouseup', toggleLabel); // needed for IE reset icon [X]
    fields.live('keydown', toggleLabel);
    fields.live('paste', toggleLabel);
    fields.live('focusin', function() {
        $(this).prev('span').css('color', '#ccc');
    });
    fields.live('focusout', function() {
        $(this).prev('span').css('color', '#999');
    });

    $(function() {
       $('input[placeholder], textarea[placeholder]').each(
           function() { toggleLabel.call(this); }
       );
    });

})(jQuery);

CSS

.placeholder {
  background: white;
  float: left;
  clear: both;
}
.placeholder span {
  position: absolute;
  padding: 5px;
  margin-left: 3px;
  color: #999;
}
.placeholder input, .placeholder textarea {
  position: relative;
  margin: 0;
  border-width: 1px;
  padding: 6px;
  background: transparent;
  font: inherit;
}

/* Hack to remove Safari's extra padding. Remove if you don't care about pixel-perfection. */
@media screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio:0) {
    .placeholder input, .placeholder textarea { padding: 4px; }
}