Clear TEXTAREA value after click (onFocus)

javascript html textarea onfocus
Jeff picture Jeff · Feb 17, 2011 · Viewed 31.9k times · Source

I'm currently using..

onfocus="this.value=''; return false;"

to clear the value within my textarea for leaving comments. However, when you click to enter a comment and type a few things, if you were to click outside the box to maybe read something else on the page and then return to your comment by clicking within the textarea box again, it clears your current input.

Is there anyway to clear the textarea on the initial click just to clear the default value and not the rest of the clicks for the rest of the browser page's session?

Answer

methodofaction picture methodofaction · Feb 17, 2011

It's better to put instructions into a label tag, position it over the textarea, and then hide it or show it if the textarea is focused. The reason for this is because your textearea will be populated with instructions and these might get sent if they are inside a form.

But, solve your problem, all you have to do is:

onfocus="if(this.value== "your initial text"){this.value=''}; return false;"

Related questions

Creating a textarea with auto-resize

There was another thread about this, which I've tried. But there is one problem: the textarea doesn't shrink if you delete the content. I can't find any way to shrink it to the correct size - the clientHeight value comes …

Read More
How to add line breaks to an HTML textarea?

I’m editing a <textarea> with JavaScript. The problem is that when I make line breaks in it, they won’t display. How can I do this? I’m getting the value to write a function, but it …

Read More
Rendering HTML inside textarea

I need to be able to render some HTML tags inside a textarea (namely <strong>, <i>, <u>, <a>) but textareas only interpret their content as text. Is there an easy way of …

Read More