With a jQuery implementation you can EASILY remove the default values when it is time to submit. Below is an example:
$('#submit').click(function(){
var text = this.attr('placeholder');
var inputvalue = this.val(); // you need to collect this anyways
if (text === inputvalue) inputvalue = "";
// $.ajax(... // do your ajax thing here
});
I know that you are looking for an overlay, but you might prefer the ease of this route (now knowing what I wrote above). If so, then I wrote this for my own projects and it works really nice (requires jQuery) and takes just a couple minutes to implement for your entire site. It offers grey text at first, light grey when in focus, and black when typing. It also offers the placeholder text whenever the input field is empty.
First set up your form and include your placeholder attributes on the input tags.
<input placeholder="enter your email here">
Just copy this code and save it as placeholder.js.
(function( $ ){
$.fn.placeHolder = function() {
var input = this;
var text = input.attr('placeholder'); // make sure you have your placeholder attributes completed for each input field
if (text) input.val(text).css({ color:'grey' });
input.focus(function(){
if (input.val() === text) input.css({ color:'lightGrey' }).selectRange(0,0).one('keydown', function(){
input.val("").css({ color:'black' });
});
});
input.blur(function(){
if (input.val() == "" || input.val() === text) input.val(text).css({ color:'grey' });
});
input.keyup(function(){
if (input.val() == "") input.val(text).css({ color:'lightGrey' }).selectRange(0,0).one('keydown', function(){
input.val("").css({ color:'black' });
});
});
input.mouseup(function(){
if (input.val() === text) input.selectRange(0,0);
});
};
$.fn.selectRange = function(start, end) {
return this.each(function() {
if (this.setSelectionRange) { this.setSelectionRange(start, end);
} else if (this.createTextRange) {
var range = this.createTextRange();
range.collapse(true);
range.moveEnd('character', end);
range.moveStart('character', start);
range.select();
}
});
};
})( jQuery );
To use on just one input
$('#myinput').placeHolder(); // just one
This is how I recommend you implement it on all input fields on your site when the browser does not support HTML5 placeholder attributes:
var placeholder = 'placeholder' in document.createElement('input');
if (!placeholder) {
$.getScript("../js/placeholder.js", function() {
$(":input").each(function(){ // this will work for all input fields
$(this).placeHolder();
});
});
}
