Last week I was dealing with a unique problem. I needed to set focus to a username field, but the field had an in-field label. The script was set to clear out the helper text (label) when the user entered the field. Hmm…. that won’t work! I remember seeing a nicer implementation on Mobile Me for their login. Basically the label stays over the input element even after it had focus. Only after typing began did it totally disappear. Inspired by that implementation, today I am releasing the In-Field Labels jQuery Plugin so you can use this new method as well. The plugin is open source and available for download or on Github. If you can make it better, please fork it and send a pull request when you have finished your changes!
http://fuelyourcoding.com/scripts/infield/
http://fuelyourcoding.com/in-field-labels/
http://trevordavis.net/blog/jquery-inline-form-labels/