On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 12:24 PM, Andy Lyttle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Oct 3, 2008, at 10:15 AM, Jonas Sicking wrote: > > Russell Leggett wrote: >> >>> I've wrestled with this because its something that our designer has >>> wanted to use all over the place for an application I'm working on. It turns >>> out to be a usability nightmare if not used sparingly. >>> >> >> Why was it a uasability nightmare? Would it still have been a useability >> nightmare if there had existed a semantic 'placeholder' attribute? >> > > Or was it because they really should have been using labels, instead of > trying to shoehorn all the labels into placeholders that disappear on focus > so as soon as you click you can't see what you're supposed to be doing? I can't speak for him, but I'm willing to state "Bingo" for myself. A blog post commenting on the "use javascript to turn labels into placeholders" technique [1] brought up *exactly* that issue. That's really just an argument to use it sparingly, though - if a semantic way to do this was presented, there'd be no problem with using it for an attractive and compact login form. @Jonas: The question that presents itself is what semantic @placeholder could present that isn't already covered by <label>. [1]: http://www.simiandesign.com/blog-fu/2005/09/javascript_for.php ~TJ