It seems you can fade the placeholder text in and out of you do something like this:
input.form-control::placeholder{
color:red;font-weight:bold;text-indent:100px;transition:all 1s ease;
}
input.form-control:focus::placeholder{color:rgba(255,255,255,0)}
(Not tested in anything else but chrome)
At present the test works using :focus so as I mentioned before change your js to add and remove classes and then you can tie that style change in to using a class instead of focus…
If I get a chance later I’ll do a demo.