Bug 54402 – REGRESSION (r72052): Placeholder text doesn't have the right padding for search fields on Windows

• Component: Forms
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Yair Yogev]

Placeholder text in input elements is always aligned to top instead of centred, it ignores padding and alignment. It also appears too close to the left corner when using "type=search".

Confirmed using Windows Safari using WebKit r78045

inChromiumBug: http://crbug.com/72413

[Yair Yogev]

Created attachment 82342 [details]
test case

[Yair Yogev]

Created attachment 82343 [details]
screenshot from Chrome before and after

[Adele Peterson]

There's no padding in this test case.  Is this Windows-specific?

[Yair Yogev]

I only tested under Windows.

In the screenshot, the left side is the current results, the right part is the pre r72052 results (which is apparently the expected results for the test case).

it also ignores styles such as "text-align: center;" (see test2)

[Yair Yogev]

Created attachment 82424 [details]
test2 (text-align)

[Adele Peterson]

I confirmed this is specific to Windows.

[Adele Peterson]

So far, we have these issues:

line-height
text-align
and search field default padding

For the line-height problem, I haven't yet been able to figure out why this would be different on Mac and Windows.  We're getting the y position of the inner text element to figure out where to draw the placeholder.  I don't know why that would be different.

[Adele Peterson]

For the text-align case, the placeholder is appearing in the same horizontal position as where the actual text shows up.  I know that's a change from before, but that doesn't seem as bad as the other issues.

[Seth Archer Brown]

This problem is not specific to windows I've verified it in OS X .

[Adele Peterson]

Perhaps we should break this out into separate bugs.

I actually think the text-align behavior is right since the placeholder now shows up where the text will actually show up.

So maybe we should use this bug for the search field padding (which, I think should be fixed by considering results/cancel padding + margin in the clientPaddingLeft/Right methods), and then we should file a new bug for the line-height bug.  Both of those do not reproduce on Mac for me.

[Adele Peterson]

I take it back - the line-height bug exists on Mac too.  I'll file another bug for that.

[Adele Peterson]

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54797
REGRESSION (r72052): Placeholder text isn't centered with a large line-height

[Yair Yogev]

(In reply to comment #10)
> I actually think the text-align behavior is right since the placeholder now shows up where the text will actually show up.

i'm confused. how can the "text-align" behavior be correct if "input::-webkit-input-placeholder" is explicitly used?

you can replace it with "input:-moz-placeholder" to see how it's supposed to look in FF (the same way it did before r72052 in WebKit)

[Yair Yogev]

correction for the last part: (the same way "input::-webkit-input-placeholder" did before r72052 in WebKit)

[Adele Peterson]

We don't support all styles on the input element, and it doesn't make sense to respect text-align in the placeholder, but not the actual text.

[Yair Yogev]

(In reply to comment #8)
> For the text-align case, the placeholder is appearing in the same horizontal position as where the actual text shows up.

i can easily add "style="text-align: right"" to the input tag,
in that case the placeholder will still be aligned to the left (despite webkit-input-placeholder) but after clicking on the box any text entered will be right aligned...

am i missing anything?
i can think of plenty of reasons to use a deferent alignment for the placeholder (probably since i speak an RTL language)

[Adele Peterson]

For RTL languages, direction:rtl will work just fine.

[Yair Yogev]

true, but RTL directionality and alignment is not the same thing.

not a good example anyway, it doesn't have to be right alignment:
<input type="text" placeholder="blabla" style="text-align: center" />

is another example where according to my tests the placeholder will be left aligned but the text centered.

apparently "text-align" for the placeholder has a use or it wouldn't have been reported in the chromium bugtracker

[Adele Peterson]

Please file a new bug for text-align.  I don't plan on addressing that issue at the same time as these other, more serious, issues.

[Yair Yogev]

filed
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54814
REGRESSION (r72052): Placeholder text ignores text-align

[Adele Peterson]

Created attachment 83251 [details]
patch for search field padding

[Adele Peterson]

Committed revision 79284.