Display span over input with HTML+CSS

Question

I want to display a span element over an input element with CSS. How can I do this. My current code:

<input type="url" placeholder="e.g. www.google.com" />
<span>http://</span>

How can I display the span element on the input element so that the users know there is no need to enter http:// so it would look like if there's already a value in but then it is the span element on the input? I assume I can do that with CSS positioning.

I cannot use placeholder as I don't want it to be removed.

Solution 1

As you have mentioned you need to use positioning and wrap your input with span into div or some other element.

.wrapper {
    position: relative;
}

input {
    padding-left: 48px;
}

.wrapper span {
    position: absolute;
    left: 2px;
}

<div class="wrapper">
    <input type="url" placeholder="e.g. www.google.com" />
    <span>http://</span>    
</div>

Example

Solution 2

This is a bit of an old post, but there is a more simple way of doing this and without using positioning. Wrap each element of the form in a list item and set the display to 'inline-block' and the display of the span to 'block' like this -

li{
   display: inline-block;
}

li span{
   display: block;
}

You would then need to swap the order of the html elements like so -

<span>http://</span>
<input type="url" placeholder="e.g. www.google.com" />

You could however leave it the same if you wanted the span to display on the bottom of the input element.

Solution 3

something like this: fiddle

* {
    font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
    font-size: 12px;
}
.row {
    position:relative;
}
.row span {
    position:absolute;
    left:5px;
    top:5px;
}
.row input {
    padding-left: 40px;
    line-height: 16px;
}

<div class="row">
    <span>http://</span>
    <input type="url" placeholder="e.g. www.google.com" />
</div>