Tag: field

How to style a file input element in Firefox

Working on a recent project I found out the hard way that Firefox doesn’t allow you to style a file input element the way you want. I’m using Chrome for surfing and development, which let’s you style a file input field without any constraints so I was a bit frustrated when I checked my form in Firefox! With a quick search I discovered that Firefox doesn’t let you do too much with the file input element. I also discovered some workarounds, but most of them were too complicated for the simple effect I wanted to achieve (to place a background image in the file input field). With a little help from stackoverflow and no javascript at all, I managed to make it work in Firefox as well as other browsers (see code below).

See the Pen How to style a file input element in Firefox by John Tsevdos (@tsevdos) on CodePen

See the Pen How to style a file input element in Firefox by John Tsevdos (@tsevdos) on CodePen

Safari’s HTML5 search input

The safest and easiest way to upgrade your markup to HTML5 is to use the new form input types. They will appear as ordinary text inputs on older browsers, and at the same time they’ll save you tons of work on form validation, and as a bonus they’ll assist your users in filling them (by providing more in-browser features, alternate keyboard layouts and more). This blog theme uses a search input to search the site.

<input id="s" name="s" type="search" />Check out this Pen!

It works great, but unfortunately, Safari’s default search input generates a close button (x) into the input field (while you type). Supposedly this will help the users to view recent search keywords, but if they they decide that they don’t need help, they can just click it and remove everything from list and the input field. I didn’t need this in-browser style for my search input, so after an investigation, I discovered the below solution.

input[type="search"] {
  -webkit-appearance: textfield;
}Check out this Pen!

This rule will transform your search input (with the strange close button) into a typical text field input that you can style properly.