How to test if the browser supports the native placeholder attribute?

Question

I'm trying to write a simple placeholder jQuery plugin for a site of mine but of course I only want to fire the function if the native placeholder attribute isn't supported…

How can I use jQuery to test for native support of the placeholder attribute?

Answer 1

You can add to $.support quite easily by inserting this at the top of the Javascript you've written:

jQuery.support.placeholder = (function(){
    var i = document.createElement('input');
    return 'placeholder' in i;
})();

You can then use either $.support.placeholder or jQuery.support.placeholder anywhere in your code.

NB This code adapted from diveintohtml5, the link provided by hellvinz above.

Answer 2

Use the Modernizr library, which you can find here: http://www.modernizr.com/

And then do this:

if (Modernizr.input.placeholder) {
  // your placeholder text should already be visible!
} else {
  // no placeholder support :(
  // fall back to a scripted solution
}

Modernizr is really handy for testing the browser's support for almost all HTML5 functionality.

Answer 3

I like having such a simple class ...

var Browser = {
  Can: {
    Placeholder: function () {
      return 'placeholder' in document.createElement('input'); 
    }
  }
}

... so you can easily check if your browser supports the placeholder attribute.

if (Browser.Can.Placeholder()) {

}

Answer 4

The placeholder property exists on INPUT DOM objects in all browsers regardless whether or not the placeholder attribute has been defined on the HTML INPUT element.

The correct way is:

var Modernizr = {};
// Create the input element for various Web Forms feature tests.
var inputElem = document.createElement('input'), attrs = {};    
Modernizr.input = (function(props) {
    for(var i = 0, len = props.length; i < len; i++) {
        attrs[props[i]] = props[i] in inputElem;
    }
    return attrs;
})('autocomplete autofocus list placeholder max min multiple pattern required step'.split(' '));

if(!Modernizr.input.placeholder) {
    // Do something.
}