design.ubuntu.com search field has inconsistently styled hint text

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

1. Go to <http://design.ubuntu.com/>.
2. Look at the search field.
3. Focus the search field.
4. Unfocus the search field.

What you see:
2. The word "Search" in roman text.
4. The word "Search" in italics.

What you should see: either
* the field has no hint text at all, or
* the formatting is consistent regardless of whether the field was previously focused.

I'd prefer no hint text at all. It's a text field, with a magnifying glass icon, in the navigation area of the page; I think we can tell it's a search field without any more help.

[Anthony Dillon (ya-bo-ng)]

The different styling has been removed uniforming the styling. The placeholder text on a search text field is common practise and semantic.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Since the field no longer has inconsistently styled hint text, this bug is fixed.

By the way, that something is common practice does not mean that it works well. Nielsen Norman Group has a good summary of the usability problems with placeholder text. <http://www.nngroup.com/articles/form-design-placeholders/>