Conquer Forms with HTML5 and CSS

Before HTML5, adding things like date pickers, placeholder text, and range sliders into forms has always needed JavaScript. Similarly, there has been no easy way to help users input the kind of data we expect them to into certain input fields, for example, whether we want users to input telephone numbers, email addresses, or URLs.

The good news is that HTML5 largely solves these common problems.

We have two main aims in this chapter. Firstly, to understand HTML5 form features and secondly, to understand how we can lay out forms more simply for multiple devices with the latest CSS features. In this chapter, we will learn how to:

• Easily add placeholder text into relevant form input fields
• Disable auto-completion of form fields where necessary
• Set certain fields to be required before submission
• Specify different input types such as email, telephone number, and URL
• Create number range sliders for...