Re: [css4-ui] ::placeholder and :placeholder feedback

On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 3:21 PM, Sylvain Galineau <galineau@adobe.com> wrote:
> Arron, Elika and were discussing this topic at TTWF Seattle almost a month
> ago; Elika asked me to resend some feedback that may have been lost in the
> shuffle back in our February discussions. My bad for taking so long.
>
> Back in my previous gig a ::placeholder element initially made a lot of
> sense to some of us. We thought it generated more issues than benefits
> though.
>
> The main one being that as people start styling their control layout to
> position/size the ::value pseudo they will quickly learn that
> ::placeholder does not magically follow its sibling. While it's easy to
> figure out and fix both items are expected to share a number of properties
> most of the time. So every time authors want to style more than colors
> they may have to write an extra rule to declare those things they need
> ::value and ::placeholder to have in common. I can't claim we were a
> representative sample but there seemed to be a strong expectation that
> ::value and ::placeholder are, by default, two faces of the same coin.
> Which suggested we were really dealing with a state.
>
> Having two pseudo-elements makes it also possible to step out of the
> placeholder use-case entirely e.g. lay out placeholder and value side by
> side to use the former for other purposes such as a small graphical prompt
> or any other odd bits we may not think of today. I have no strong opinion
> as to whether this is good or bad but custom scenarios like these (or
> enabling interesting fades) may come with other interesting requirements
> that are best addressed with Shadow DOM.
>
> (The previous paragraph assumes the implementation's default stylesheet
> uses the :placeholder pseudo-class to show/hide ::placeholder, thus
> allowing authors to override these defaults; I think that is a reasonable
> expectation for authors to have).
>
> Yes, setting opacity on the placeholder text is easier with ::placeholder.
> As such, it is a cheaper solution to spec and implement than improving
> opacity; but I'm not sure authors will be better off with the result. Or
> implementors, who will have to maintain this slightly awkward setup for
> many years to come.

The ::value pseudo-element doesn't meaningfully exist, though.  If
we'd *like* it to exist, then we can talk about its interaction with
::placeholder, and whether ::value+:placeholder-shown is a sufficient
replacement for ::placeholder.

~TJ

Received on Monday, 6 May 2013 17:15:36 UTC