Because there are so many different kinds of formats for text fields, it is helpful to give your users a hint as to what format they need to enter. For example, a text field set with the Phone Number validation type accepts phone numbers in the form (000) 000-0000 by default. You can enter these sample numbers as a hint so that the text field displays the correct format when the user loads the page in a browser.

This option doesn't depend on the validation type, so you can always specify it. (Specify "none" as your validation type, if no other validation type is required.) When the user clicks inside the text field, the hint disappears; when the user clicks outside the text field, Spry restores the hint to the textfield if the field contains no value.

<script type="text/javascript">
	var tf1 = new Spry.Widget.ValidationTextField("textfieldwidget1", "validation_type", {hint:"some hint text here"});
</script>