AFAIK, that’s how most browsers implement placeholders today (UX-wise), and it has nothing to do with whether they use pseudo-classes or pseudo-elements. Why can't that styling be done in CSS? It’s just a color change. Yes, it's easier with opacity because it keeps the same color, but that only holds true for today and it's not a placeholder-specific problem, as I detailed in my previous email. Another thing: Using a pseudo-element has serious problems when padding is involved [1]. Most inputs in real-life websites have padding > 0. Setting a different background or border for the placeholder state is a reasonable use case and shouldn't be this hard to do properly. IMO, using a pseudo-element & opacity for this looks like a hack trying to circumvent a limitation of the language (setting the color alpha individually) that should probably be addressed directly. I've read the entire thread carefully and I didn't see any other argument for using a pseudo-element besides that. [1]: http://dabblet.com/gist/4615583 Lea Verou W3C developer relations http://w3.org/people/all#lea ✿ http://lea.verou.me ✿ @leaverou On Jan 24, 2013, at 00:47, Philip Walton wrote: > > On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 2:24 PM, Lea Verou <lea@w3.org> wrote: > > 2) Is there any other use case for a pseudoelement apart from opacity? I can't see any, but my imagination might be limited. :) > > Before most browsers supported placeholders, it was pretty common to see jQuery plugins polyfill this behavior. A common effect was to have the placeholder start at a gray color, fade out when you focused on the element, and then disappear completely as soon as you typed a single character. > > This would be impossible to achieve in pure CSS unless the placeholder were a pseudo-element. > > Here's a demo plugin that's pretty similar to what I used to see a lot: > http://jsfiddle.net/6HQWv/ >
Received on Wednesday, 23 January 2013 23:24:27 UTC