I have seen a similar approach: The shadowtext is displayed only when the control has the focus (and no value was already entered, obviously) and this text is selected by default. This way, when the user types something, the shadow text is cleared automatically.

I like more your approach, but it seems more difficult to implement.

Vlad

>When the textbox received focus, indicating that the user is about to enter information, the shadowtext is replaced with blank. Otherwise there is the concern that the user (1) will become confused and/or (2) will merely edit or add to the prompt text -- which is not what I want.