Not at all @wrs. I develop on a Mac, and in Chrome and FF 3.6 on Mac the text-shadow seems to help readability, but I just took a closer look on Windows and I can totally see how it is a distraction. (The font rendering and thus text-shadow rendering is quite different) I removed the text-shadow from the paragraphs and have updated the site.
Sorry about that! I develop on a Mac, and in Chrome and FF 3.6 on Mac the text-shadow seems to help readability, but I just took a closer look on Windows and can totally see how it is a distraction. I removed the text-shadow from the paragraphs and have updated the site. Hope that makes it easier to read!
I think you are including the jQuery load time as part of your example. If you have nothing else on the page (no other jQuery, etc) then don't use a plugin.
On the examples page, I profiled the five InFieldLabel calls at a total of just over 28ms. Firefox 3.5, 2.2 Ghz Core Duo. Its not the field calls that take 500ms, even in Firefox 3.0.
Labels don't cause harm, but if you are trying to put together a tiny login box on a page, or a condensed form, etc. If it’s a longer in page form, you shouldn't use this plugin.
As far as Javascript is concerned, I am going to add that into the plugin. Basically, add a class that moves the label over the field when the script is run. Good point though.
The benefit of the In-Field Label plugin is that there is never a "temporary" value in the field itself. Since the label is overlaid, the field remains empty. There is less to check for server side if a form gets submitted prematurely.