what the best way to display a default text in textbixes and textareas

Question

A form on my website's contact -us HTML page has two fields

1) subject

2) message

When the page loads for the first time I want these two boxes to display messages like "Enter subject here" and "Enter Message here".

I found that we can do this by using the "value" attribute of the text box, is this the best way ??.. What alternatives do I have to achieve this ?

Answer 1

Yes, that is the best way. You can then use JavaScript to empty the text input/area when the element gains focus. Remember to consider how you want to handle the case where the user submits the default text. I.e, is "Enter username" a valid username or not?