Question: I have a search form

```
<input id="price_from" value="price from ">
<input id="price_to" value="price to ">
<button>search</button>

```

How can I disable editing of dafault text? When user starts to type in price amount it's not possible to edit "price from " and "price to " but they stay in input field. I've tried different mask plugins for jquery but they didn't show default text untill you focus on field and don't provide option for custom text. Only placeholders an chars.

Answer: 
I don't think all the other answerers understood the question correctly. The question requires disabling editing **part of the text**. One solution I can think of is simulating a textbox with a **fixed** prefix which is not part of the textarea or input.

An example of this approach is:

```
<div style="border:1px solid gray; color:#999999; font-family:arial; font-size:10pt; width:200px; white-space:nowrap;">Default Notes<br/>
<textarea style="border:0px solid black;" cols="39" rows="5"></textarea></div>

```

The other approach, which I end up using is using JS and JQuery to simulate "Disable" feature. Example with pseudo-code (cannot be specific cause of legal issue):

```
  // disable existing notes by preventing keystroke
  document.getElementById("txtNotes").addEventListener('keydown', function (e) {
    if (cursorLocation < defaultNoteLength ) {
            e.preventDefault();
  });

    // disable existing notes by preventing right click
    document.addEventListener('contextmenu', function (e) {
        if (cursorLocation < defaultNoteLength )
            e.preventDefault();
    });

```

Thanks, Carsten, for mentioning that this question is old, but I found that the solution might help other people in the future.
How about `disabled=disabled`:

```
<input id="price_from" value="price from " disabled="disabled">​​​​​​​​​​​​

```

Problem is if you don't want user to edit them, why display them in input? You can hide them even if you want to submit a form. And to display information, just use other tag instead.