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Another reason not to do this: browser autofill. Now and again, the browser will guess wrong on what value to insert, and now the user won't know what's supposed to go there. Even if they clear the value, no user will assume that de-focusing the input will reveal the label.

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Exactly. Off late, I have been running into this issue a lot.

I use Lastpass to manage my authentication information, and I always let it auto-fill new signup forms. It's an incredibly smart piece of software, and gets things right most of the time. However, on occasions when it doesn't fill up a everything correctly, not having a label is a big disadvantage. I have to first clear out the text, de-focus the form-field (Tab or Shift+Tab), then read the field name and come back and fill up that field.

I don't know for others but both Chrome and Firefox hide the placeholder only when the input value is non empty.

So it do not disappear when to give focus to the field.

Yes. But, it doesn't reappear as soon as you remove all text. The placeholder reappears after you remove the text, and change the focus.

It does reappear as soon as I remove all text under firefox 16 and Chrome 24 at least.

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