Wayne:
> I'm trying to prompt for input within the field using the Example > plugin (http://plugins.jquery.com/project/example). The idea is that > I'm styling my input field to be unsually large when the user types > (it will be no more than a 4 or 5 digits), so I can use closer to > normal size text as the prompt. > > I know I can do this with a textarea, but it's semantically incorrect, > and using the return key creates a new line. I don't want to shoehorn > the simple input into a textarea, but I want the prompt to be > meaningful, like "Enter a measurement for this baseline," instead of > "type here" or whatever short message I could use. I also like the > amount of space that it takes up visually with two lines. > > What is a better way of doing this? Should I just use a jEditable > element and style it to look like a form input? > Why not just use an <input /> element? Use CSS to give it a transparent background and other styles you want and then place a <div /> with a lower z-index underneath with the label. I think maybe this plug-in does that: http://plugins.jquery.com/project/overlabel (But it might just be replacing the text in the field--the site is down at the moment.) If you do something like the following, then you can position the label underneath: <div style="position: relative;"> <input type="text" style="font-size: 32px; background-color: transparent; z-index: 2;" /> <div id="underlabel" style="position: absolute; z-index; 1;">Your label here...</div> </div> You'll need to set the "underlabel" <div /> to the dimensions of the <input /> element, but then you should be able to use CSS to control everything else about the layer. You can then just show/hide the "underlabel" based upon whether or not the field has focus. -Dan
