Placeholders are text shown inside a form field that suggests to the user the type of information requested. They can be hidden with CSS when the field has focus.

The following has an input and textarea with placeholder text.

<form>
    <label for="name">Name:</label>
    <input type="text" placeholder="Your Name" id="name" name="name">

    <label for="reviews">Review of 1SMARTchicken:</label>
    <textarea name="reviews" placeholder="Message" rows="5" cols="50"></textarea>

    <input type = "submit" value = "submit" />
</form>

On focus, we change the color of the text to match the background color of the inputs, in this case white. This effectively hides the placeholders.

input:focus::placeholder,
textarea:focus::placeholder {
    color: white;
}

Example:

Click into the search field and the placeholder will no longer show.