This is a simple jQuery snippet that will put text (e.g. "Search...") into a text input field based on the alt attribute. This avoids having to compute a default value server-side, and it provides more data to the user at the same time.
The HTML
<input alt="Search..." type="text" />
The jQuery
$(document).ready(function(){
$('input[alt]:text').click(function(){
if ($(this).val() == $(this).attr('alt')) {
$(this).val('');
}
}).blur(function(){
if ($(this).val() == "") {
$(this).val($(this).attr('alt'));
}
}).each(function(){
$(this).val($(this).attr('alt'));
});
});