Html5 textarea placeholder not appearing

Troubleshooting whitespace

Whitespace inside <textarea> can impersonate placeholders. Thus, avoid hosting secret meeting spots for spaces, tabs, or other characters before your closing tag.

Correct format:

<!-- Party free zone -->
<textarea placeholder="What's on your mind?"></textarea>
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Incorrect format with extra space:

<!-- Party pooper 🎈🔪 -->
<textarea placeholder="Say something..."> </textarea> <!-- Placeholder on stealth mode! -->
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Handling unexpected line endings

Watch out for line endings and hidden characters lurking and jumping out of the shadows to scare the daylights out of your placeholders, especially when migrating your code between different code editors or operating systems. Arm yourself with tools like jsfiddle to unmask and identify these tricky spectres.

Compatible or not - HTML5 plugins

If you've sided with a plugin named html5form, ensure its support for placeholders. These plugins can blend in and tweak your form elements' behavior, leading to a game of hide and seek with your placeholder text.

HTML – valid or not

Banish the Phantom of the HTML Error from haunting your placeholder text. Recruit validators like the W3C Markup Validation Service. Consult the Oracle at the HTML5 parsing specification for understanding potential aberrations lurking within your markup.

Best Practices & Tricks

Optimal placeholder rendering

Ensure an effective placeholder by maintaining a high contrast between your placeholder text color and the background. Comes in handy when grey on grey doesn't stand a chance.

<!-- Show the true colors! -->
textarea::placeholder {
  color: #b3b3b3; /* Contrast: Because Grey's Anatomy isn't everyone's cup of tea */
}
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Don't use placeholder as label

For accessibility and usability, use distinct labels for textarea. It isn't a two-for-one bargain sale so placeholders and labels cannot live under the same roof.

Clean up before the guests arrive

Before serving the form submission, ensure any pre-filled or auto-populated fields are cleaned, tidied and made leading-space-free.

<!-- Welcome, Marie Kondo! -->
document.querySelectorAll('textarea').forEach(el => el.value = el.value.trim());
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