Placeholder in contenteditable – focus event issue

Here is a CSS only solution augmenting some of the other answers:-

<div contentEditable=true data-ph="My Placeholder String"></div>
<style>
    [contentEditable=true]:empty:not(:focus)::before{
        content:attr(data-ph)
    }
</style>

EDIT: Here is my snippet on codepen -> http://codepen.io/mrmoje/pen/lkLez

EDIT2: Be advised, this method doesn’t work 100% for multi-line applications due to residual <br> elements being present in the div after performing a select-all-cut or select-all-delete on all lines. Credits:- @vsync
Backspace seems to work fine (at least on webkit/blink)