By the way, this (bug 40441) is extremely annoying and confusing, and enough of a reason for some Firefox 15 users to abandon Vector in favour of monobook.

(In reply to comment #1)

By the way, this (bug 40441) is extremely annoying and confusing, and enough of
a reason for some Firefox 15 users to abandon Vector in favour of monobook.

Then you might as well abandon the internet all together. Or switch to internet explorer 6, which doesn't have this feature yet.

This is standard behaviour and Firefox implemented it, not Vector, not MediaWiki. Our plugin actually does it the way you want it (which, unfortunately for you, is a bug that we intend to fix) - however the plugin only kicks in if there is no support for it in the browser.

For example, the search bar on http://firefox.com (press arrow button on top right to expand the many) also has this (if you view it in Firefox of Chrome). There is no javascript enforcing that, it is how browsers have decided to do it.

(In reply to comment #2)

Then you might as well abandon the internet all together. Or switch to internet
explorer 6, which doesn't have this feature yet.

I've no idea what you're talking about. I'm only relaying the experience of a
confused user, originally described on that bug.
(As for me, I've never used Vector, so I'm not affected at all.)

(In reply to comment #3)

For example, the search bar on http://firefox.com (press arrow button on top
right to expand the many) also has this (if you view it in Firefox of Chrome).
There is no javascript enforcing that, it is how browsers have decided to do
it.

I don't know if it's off topic here (summary and comment 0 are too technical for me), but firefox.com redirects me to https://www.mozilla.org/it/firefox/fx/ whose search bar behaves correctly, unlike bug 40441, because at least the placeholder is greyed out and easily recognizable as such.