There is a change in Firefox 15 that might explain part of this. Previously, when sites displayed "placeholder" text in a form field, it would vanish as soon as you clicked or tabbed into the field. Now that placeholder text stays there until you type at least one character. Because the placeholder text is more like a background image than actual text, you can't edit, delete, or move past it.

I'm running 15 beta, and Home, End, and arrows still work for me in the URL bar and in form fields like the one I'm typing in (as long as there is real text instead of a placeholder). Are you having problems there as well?

Is there a way to make the placeholder text behave as previously so that it disappears on focus rather than after typing? It's my understanding that they changed this primarily because of textboxes that receive focus when a page loads. That's fine for those specific textboxes, but it's incredibly annoying for every other textbox. Most people have become accustomed placeholder text disappearing on focus. Most web designers who have used placeholder text before HTML 5 via Javascript expect it to disappear on focus. That's why most tied it to the OnFocus event.

Hi kevinc99, I feel your pain. Unfortunately, it appears that it won't be changing back:

• Bug 673873 - display placeholder when focusing an empty input IMPLEMENTED

• Bug 758996 - placeholder should disappear when text input is clicked "WONTFIX"

There may well be a way to override it on the user's end using a style rule in userContent.css (for pages) and/or userChrome.css (for the search box) (or the Stylish extension for either of them), but this would take some research and testing to work out.

From the site's end, well, JavaScript may have to return.

Hi jscher2000,

Thanks for the info. I was afraid of that. It is quite annoying.

I played around a bit with CSS for Stylish and came up with the style below that seems to work for now.

*:-moz-placeholder:focus {
   color: transparent !important;

}

Hope this is helpful for others, too.

Here's an update that still accomplishes what Mozilla is trying to avoid with the change: The placeholder text for autofocused elements remains visible even when focused until the user types something, but for all non-autofocused elements, the placeholder text disappears on focus.

*:-moz-placeholder:focus {
   color: transparent !important;
} 

*[autofocus]:-moz-placeholder:focus {
   color: graytext !important;
}

Thanks for all your replies. Am only having problems w/ text boxes in URL and search and webpages that have placeholders. Am not able to work w/ CSS and do the changes that kevinc99 suggests. Too busy to teach CSS to myself now. Inability to manipulate placeholders is a deal breaker for me, so am going to switch off to Google Chrome.

If you have 3 minutes, you can do it! Faster than migrating to Chrome!

(1) Install the Stylish extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/stylish/

(2) After restarting Firefox, click the Stylish "S" icon on the Add-on bar > Write new style > Blank Style

(If you do not usually display the Add-on bar, press Ctrl+/ to display it. If the "S" icon is not there, drag it from the Customize dialog, which you can show using Alt+v > Toolbars > Customize)

(3) In the editor, paste this:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
*:-moz-placeholder:focus {
  color: transparent !important;
}
*[autofocus]:-moz-placeholder:focus { 
  color: graytext !important;
} 

(4) Give it a name, and click Save.

Thank you!!!!!

You can use Ctrl+End to go to the end of the text in a text area (Ctrl+Home to the begin).

• bug 673873 - display placeholder when focusing an empty input

(please do not comment in bug reports)

Thank you for the info regarding the "Stylish" add-on - works great! I tried Google Chrome - and this is happening with this browser as well!! Very annoying!!  :(

Bless you.