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2023-09-21-floating-labels.md

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Floating labels with Tailwindcss

Floating labels look amazing. Everybody likes them. I am not a designer, and I have no idea about their downsides, but as a developer it is useful to know how to build them. And because Tailwindcss is so awesome, I will build them with that. Of course you can use also bootstrap for this. But a real pro uses Tailwind. Here is a video on how to build 'em:

<iframe class="youtube-iframe" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nJzKi6oIvBA?si=i40zgq_8FSO14cNv" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Video summary

Floating labels use the peer selector provided by Tailwindcss. Because it is a "prevoius sibling" selector, it is essential that the <label> element comes after the <input> element. The input element gets the class peer, and the label is styled based on whether the input element is focused or the placeholder is shown. Meanwhile, the label is placed in a position as if it was the placeholder text. This way, the user thinks he is looking at a placeholder, while he is actually looking at the label. Also, the surrounding <div> should be positioned relative, so we can absolutely position the label inside the input element.

So here is how the html would look like:

<div class="relative">
  <input type="text" name="name" placeholder="Full name" id="id_name" class="peer">
  <label for="id_name">Full name</label>
</div>

Now we could use tailwindcss classes inside HTML to style both input and label, but why should we clutter our HTML unnecessarily? We installed django-tailwind in the [previous post]({% link _posts/2023-09-19-tailwindcss.md %}) and it comes with the tailwind forms plugin. Therefore we can achieve the styling just by adjusting the style.css.

@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;

@layer base {
  [type="text"],
  [type="email"],
  [type="url"],
  [type="password"],
  [type="number"],
  [type="date"],
  [type="datetime-local"],
  [type="month"],
  [type="search"],
  [type="tel"],
  [type="time"],
  [type="week"],
  [multiple],
  textarea,
  select {
    @apply w-full pb-1.5 pt-6 border-grey-400 rounded
    text-sm placeholder-transparent
    hover:border-grey-700
    focus:border-blue-800 focus:ring-0;
  }
  [type="checkbox"],
  [type="radio"] {
    @apply border-gray-300 rounded text-indigo-600 focus:ring-indigo-500;
  }
  label {
    @apply text-xs absolute left-3 top-2
    peer-focus:top-2 peer-focus:text-xs
    peer-placeholder-shown:top-4 peer-placeholder-shown:text-sm
    transition-all select-none cursor-text text-grey-500;
  }
}

Note the peer-focus and the peer-placeholder-shown states. The peer-focus state should move the label up, as if the input was filled. While the peer-placeholder-shown state means that the input is empty, so the label should be in the position of the placeholder.

Have fun styling!