Put icon inside input element in a form

Question

How do I put an icon inside a form's input element?

Tidal Force theme

Got me?

Answer 1

The site you linked uses a combination of CSS tricks to pull this off. First, it uses a background-image for the <input> element. Then, in order to push the cursor over, it uses padding-left.

In other words, they have these two CSS rules:

background: url(images/comment-author.gif) no-repeat scroll 7px 7px;
padding-left:30px;

Answer 2

Just use the background property in your CSS.

<input id="foo" type="text" />

#foo
{
    background: url(/img/foo.png);
}

Answer 3

You can try this:

input[type='text'] {
    background-image: url(images/comment-author.gif);
    background-position: 7px 7px;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
}

Answer 4

The CSS solutions posted by others are the best way to accomplish this.

If that should give you any problems (read IE6), you can also use a borderless input inside of a div.

<div style="border: 1px solid #DDD;">
    <img src="icon.png"/>
    <input style="border: none;"/>
</div>

Not as "clean", but should work on older browsers.