The other day I wrote about needing to blank default values when text input fields gain focus in a form. I had found a jQuery-based script that seemed to do the trick… or so I thought.
When RidingResource went beta, I was tailing the RoR logs and noticed that “ZIP” was getting sent as a value on form submission. After some further prodding, I realized that the jQuery form script I was using was not working in Internet Explorer. FireFox would have the default values not sent, but for some reason IE was not processing the jQuery in time and the default value in the text input was being sent along and wreaking havoc on the application.
I had to do some quick fixery to get it to work that way, but the search began for a better (read: functional) solution. Enter Jason Palmer and his jQuery Form Field Default Value plugin. Not to steal any of Jason’s thunder, but the plugin is elegant and doesn’t suffer any issues in Internet Explorer. You should give it a try.