Rant: I trusted the little gray placeholder text for 2 years and it was lying to me
I always typed my email into forms and hit submit without reading the little gray hint text under each box, figured it was just decoration. Last week I tried to sign up for a parking pass on a city site here in Columbus and got rejected 4 times in a row before I finally looked down and saw it said to drop the dashes in my plate number. Same deal with a billing form at work, the placeholder was actually telling me the format it wanted and I never noticed. I used to think placeholder text was lazy design, but turns out I was the lazy one, skimming right past the only instructions on the page. Anyone else ignore those hints for years and feel like a dummy the moment it clicks?