This is a complete working example of the tutorials posted below, which show how to change the default text value in an HTML form text field on focus, and how to toggle between a regular password field and and plain text field with a default value.
Here's the full source for what you need to make this work
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html> <head> <script language="javascript" src="/js/jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script> <script language="Javascript"> $(document).ready(function() { $('#password-clear').show(); $('#password-password').hide(); $('#password-clear').focus(function() { $('#password-clear').hide(); $('#password-password').show(); $('#password-password').focus(); }); $('#password-password').blur(function() { if($('#password-password').val() == '') { $('#password-clear').show(); $('#password-password').hide(); } }); $('.default-value').each(function() { var default_value = this.value; $(this).focus(function() { if(this.value == default_value) { this.value = ''; } }); $(this).blur(function() { if(this.value == '') { this.value = default_value; } }); }); }); </script> <style type="text/css"> #password-clear { display: none; } </style> </head> <body> <form> <div> <input class="default-value" type="text" name="email" value="Email Address" /> </div> <div> <input id="password-clear" type="text" value="Password" autocomplete="off" /> <input id="password-password" type="password" name="password" value="" autocomplete="off" /> </div> </form> </body> </html>