Under WebKit and Firefox, the text in a input\'s placeholder sticks around on focus—it doesn\'t disappear until input.val
input
placeholder
focus
input.val
I Googled around a bit, and found that there are some CSS pseudo-elements and pseudo-classes that can be used to style placeholders.
input:-ms-input-placeholder:focus{ color: #999; }
See this answer for more info: https://stackoverflow.com/a/2610741