I am not entirely sure if this is possible or not, I am pretty knowledgeable when it comes to jQuery and JavaScript in general, but this one has me stumped. I've created a simple plugin that clears a text input on focus and then displays the default value if nothing has been entered.

Is it possible to fade out just the text itself inside of the text input, and not the whole field itself? All attempts seem to result in the text field itself fading out and eventually hiding the element from view.

I did come up with a solution of using spans containing the default value and absolutely positioning them over the text input, hiding and showing them depending if a user has entered any text or not. I would much rather a much straightforward approach if one exists.