I am looking for a way to 'fix' a dollar symbol $ to a text input box eg <input type="text" value="$" /> but make it not possible for the default value to be removed, so that whatever the user inputs, there is always a $ symbol 'prepending' input.
Cheers
There is the possibility of a background-image but it's difficult to maintain, and doesn't react to font size changes, which makes it the less optimal choice IMO.
A better way in my opionion would be:
Put a <span>$</span> next to the input (before it, actually).
give it position: relative; left: 20px.
The $ sign then moves into the input field.
Then, give the input field padding-left: 24px.
Voilá! The $ sign is in the input field, does not obscure anything, and cannot be removed.
Expanding on Pekka's answer, I used this on my page, but I automated it a little bit with jQuery. So for this example, all of the input fields that I want to put a $ symbol in, I give them a class of "cost".
<style type="text/css" media="screen">
.cost{
position: relative;
left: 20px;
}
input.cost{
padding-left: 24px;
}
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function(){
$("#lcce form input.cost").wrap('<div class="cost">');
$("#lcce form input.cost").before('<span class="cost"></span>');
});
</script/>
This will place the span with a class of "cost" right before your input, and also wrap a div around both the input, and the span, so they are ensured to be on the same line.
If you don't have jQuery, you can get it from: jQuery.com
Now I've got a quick question - I noticed that with this styling, in IE6,7, and 8, the $ symbol is not lined up correctly. Does anybody out there have a fix for this?
Thank you!
I did it like this:
$('#price').keypress(function(event) {
var code = (event.keyCode ? event.keyCode : event.which);
if ($(this).val().indexOf('$') === -1){
document.getElementById("price").value = "$" + $(this).val();
} else {
document.getElementById("price").value = $(this).val();
}
});
with <input type="text" id="price">.
User can remove the dollar sign manually though if he/she wants to.
Is this as a visual effect only? If yes you could apply that with CSS as a background image on the input.
Afterwards, on the server, you can do whatever you want with the value (e.g prepend it with $).
I too have been looking at different solutions for this. Using css to indent the text with padding and putting a background image in that position is your best bet.