On 18 Mar 2013 at 23:44, Glenn Maynard <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Markus Ernst <[email protected]> wrote: > >> 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.
> I've seen browsers (or maybe pages emulating placeholder in script) that > hide the placeholder text while the input field is focused. When the > placeholders are labels for the inputs, it's incredibly annoying to have to > focus something else in order to see the placeholder text. If placeholders > are meant to be useful and not just eyecandy, they need to remain visible > until the user enters something. But that's not what users do. You read the placeholder text, which may may hint at what is expected there, and the field should have a separate label. Then you focus there, and the placeholder text should vanish. Why? because I've lost count of the number of users I see trying to select the placeholder text so they can delete it, and then start typing. -- Cheers -- Tim
