Join UMBC's LSAT Test Prep and prepare for the types of questions included in the Law School Admissions Test. Designed to improve performance on the competitive LSAT, this intensive course focuses on:

1. Test-taking techniques
2. Time-saving methods
3. Improving logical reasoning
4. Practicing with sample tests
5. Enhancing reading comprehension
6. Reducing test anxiety

Taught by Dr. Anthony Poplawski of Spiegelberg and Associates, UMBC’s Test Preparation Courses are acclaimed for their comprehensiveness, revealing the true character of the test, their focus on maximizing scores, their intellectual seriousness, and reducing the test candidate’s test anxiety. Instruction is at the highest professional level by experienced college faculty.

Please visit The Law School Admission Council at www.lsac.org to view information on the LSAT exam.

TO REGISTER AND LEARN MORE ABOUT THE COURSE, PLEASE VISIT:

http://www.umbc.edu/testprep/lsat

The next class will begin on May 7th and meet on Tuesdays at UMBC's South campus from 6-9:30 pm

Register by April 16 for a 10% early bird discount!

UMBC Students, Staff, Faculty, Individuals and Organizations all volunteer to help on the day of URCAD and in the days before and after. Join

Sign up to be a part of UMBC's Premiere campus-wide undergraduate research event.

• Read the URCAD Roles
• Sign up to help

Note: Volunteer dress for URCAD is neat but business attire is NOT expected.
Comfortable shoes are a must.

If you would like to help and have questions about the process, e-mail kerryk@umbc.edu.

It is Housing Selection time!  Apply on-line for priority for on-campus housing for the 2013-2014 academic year!  www.umbc.edu/reslife Returning residents have priority for housing if they meet the March 31st deadline.  Don't miss it!

Housing Selection brochure attached!

Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth

by Mark Hertsgaard

http://www.umbc.edu/undergrad_ed/book/ For twenty years, Mark Hertsgaard has investigated global warming as a journalist, but the full truth did not hit home until he became a father and, soon thereafter, learned that climate change was bound to worsen for decades to come. Hertsgaard's daughter is part of what he has dubbed "Generation Hot" — the two billion young people worldwide who will spend the rest of their lives coping with climate disruption. Drawing on reporting from around the world, Hot is a call to action that injects hope and solutions into a debate characterized by doom and gloom and offers a blueprint for how all of us can navigate an unavoidable new era. Why NSBE? The opportunity to participate in a Essay Contest. Reading and discussion that is good preparation for English 100, which uses the book in assignments throughout the semester. Related campus-wide lectures throughout the year Preparation for other classes, which discuss topics addressed by the book.	NSBE 2013 Nominated by Mary Rivkin Associate Professor Education
	Purchase the book here.

For More Information:
Jill Randles
Assistant Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education
jrandles@umbc.edu | (410) 455-3715

An HTML5 feature that had the web community abuzz with excitement a couple of years ago was the placeholder attribute for displaying placeholder text in input fields. Now that it’s widely supported by modern browsers, there is a lot more we can do with this useful feature, like customize the text’s appearance.

The latest ::input-placeholder CSS pseudo-element gives us a standards-compliant way to style placeholder text, regardless of an input field’s default styles.

Styling Placeholder Text

A browser applies predefined styles to text displayed via the placeholder attribute. By default, the text is a light gray, which can be difficult to read depending on the context.

There was a bit of dashed hope when developers discovered that there were no CSS styling options available for placeholders –– it was the UA styles or nothing. The good news is that the new ::input-placeholder pseudo-element allows us to break out of the UA norm by offering more styling flexibility.

For example, let’s use the following placeholder and change its color and text case:

<input type="text" placeholder="I'm placeholder text!">

We’ll then create a CSS rule using the new pseudo-element:

input::-webkit-input-placeholder {
       color: rgba(0,5,143,.5);
       text-transform: uppercase;
    }

::input-placeholder has decent implementation, but for now we’ll need to use vendor prefixes. We are also unable to combine the prefixed selectors into one rule. They each need to be defined separately, otherwise the entire rule will be ignored by the browser.

input::-webkit-input-placeholder {
    	color: rgba(0,5,143,.5);
    	text-transform: uppercase;
    }
    input::-moz-placeholder {
    	color: rgba(0,5,143,.5);
    	text-transform: uppercase;
    }
    input:-moz-placeholder {   /* Older versions of Firefox */
    	color: rgba(0,5,143,.5);
    	text-transform: uppercase;
    }
    input:-ms-input-placeholder { 
    	color: rgba(0,5,143,.5);
    	text-transform: uppercase;
    }

Check it out in CodePen.

The Placeholder Attribute Selector

Additionally, we can target input fields entirely based on whether or not they have a placeholder attribute with the [placeholder] attribute selector:

input[placeholder] {
       font-weight: bold;
       border-color: blue;
    }

Now, every input field that has a placeholder attribute will have a bold font weight and blue border.

Which properties can we use?

Not all CSS properties are supported in a ::input-placeholder rule. In fact, only a handful are, the most useful ones being:

color
font-size
font-style
font-weight
letter-spacing
line-height
padding
text-align
text-decoration


It’s important to keep in mind that placeholder styles will not resize an input field and will not affect its box model. A line height and padding, for example, will move a placeholder,  but too much padding and line height will display the text outside the content area of a field obscuring some parts. The same occurs with font sizes.

input::-webkit-input-placeholder {
       padding-top: 8px;
    }

Placeholder text is cut off

Browser Support

The ::input-placeholder pseudo-element is currently supported in Firefox 4+, Chrome 4+, Safari 5+, Opera 11.6 and IE10. Firefox supports both a pseudo-element and a pseudo-class for older versions of Firefox.

Form interaction is an integral part of just about everything we do on the web. So even small enhancement features like this help us make great strides in developing powerful user experiences.

To learn more about new CSS features, take a look at my latest CSS Foundations Deep Dive.

The post The CSS3 Placeholder Pseudo-element appeared first on Treehouse Blog.