Textareas

[blain]

I have seen it on some peoples contact forms where they have default text in a textarea that disappears when clicked on.
Any idea how this is done?

[elgumbo]

Hi

You can do this using javascript:

eg:

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
	function clearBox(box) {
		 if(box.value==box.defaultValue) {
	 	 	 box.value = "";
	 	 }
	 }
//-->
</script>
<form>
<textarea name="1" cols="3" rows="3" onFocus="clearBox(this);" > default text</textarea>
</form>

[pixelz]

Hey Blain,

This is pretty straightforward, luckily. It's a simple attribute change.

So, <input name="myForm" /> will just give you a blank box, but if you add the value attribute like so: <input name="myForm" value="This is my default content" /> should fill in this text in the box.

For a textarea, it's even simpler - put the value you want to enter in between the <textarea> tags: <textarea>value</textarea>

Making it dissapear is a little bit more tricky as you will have to listen for an onClick event and then run some javascript to assign a blank value to the box. maybe something like this.

<input name="myForm" value="This is my default content" onClick="clearValue(this)" />

function clearValue(boxToClear) {
myForm.boxToClear.value = "";
}

Something like that - I'm not 100% sure of the syntax but that's the basic idea. This will probably work with a textarea too, but you may have to change the innerHTML proerty though.

HTH!

Cheers

Pixelz

[blain]

cheers guys, it worked.