placeholder is not working in IE9

Question

I am salesforce (SFDC) developer. In my visualforce page for input box I am using placeholder code.

<div class="control-group">
    <label class="control-label visible-desktop" for="first_name">First Name</label>
    <div class="controls">
        <input class="input-block-level" name="First Name" id="first_name" placeholder="First Name" value="" type="text" required="required" autofocus="autofocus" />
    </div>
</div>

I checked in internet for some CSS hack but I didn't find any. I find some javascript hack.

HTML5 Placeholder jQuery Plugin

https://github.com/mathiasbynens/jquery-placeholder

Demo & Examples

http://mathiasbynens.be/demo/placeholder

But I don't want to use jQuery hack or something.

Solution

As IE9 doesn't support the placeholder attribute, you can do it in Javascript/jQuery like so (quickly written, not tested):

if(navigator.appVersion.match(/MSIE [\d.]+/)){
    var placeholderText = 'Some Placeholder Text';
    $('#first_name').val(placeholderText);
    $('#first_name').blur(function(){
        $(this).val() == '' ? $(this).val(placeholderText) : false;
    });
    $('#first_name').focus(function(){
        $(this).val() == placeholderText ? $(this).val('') : false;
    });
}

Do the same for the blur event too, then that will mimic a placeholder attribute.

[Edit]

Okay, after rethinking this (due to the comment) this is really not the most elegant solution (however it does work), so I would disregard this answer totally.