Styling HTML5 placeholder attribute text

HTML5 placeholder attributes can be leveraged to provide a convenient means of indicating required input formats.

By default, browsers typically implement placeholder attributes as light-grey text. As with all default user agent styles, one will feel compelled to define custom selectors to provide application specific styles to elements, placeholder attributes included.

Styling Placeholder Text

Styling placeholder attributes on input and textarea elements is rather simple; however, one should take care to keep style declarations limited to those of a textual nature; e.g. color, font-size, font-family, etc.

As it stands, HTML5 placeholder attributes can be styled with pseudo-elements in WebKit, and pseudo-classes in both Firefox and IE10; all of which (currently) require vendor prefixes.

Placeholder attribute text can be styled for all supported input element types (text, search, url, tel, email, and password) as follows:

As can be seen, defining styles for placeholder attribute text is quite simple, and such styles can be employed to add subtle enhancements to form elements in modern web apps quite nicely.

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