I cant think why? It works with the first text field, but not with the second! They use the same script and almost identical event handlers!

Here is my HTML

    <form action="" method="post" name="form1" class="contact" id="form1">
        <p class="frmIntro">Feel free to message us through  our contact form and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.</p>
  <p>
          <label for="name">Name</label>
          <input name="name" type="text" id="name" size="30" maxlength="30" onfocus="active(name)" onblur="deActive(name)" />
        </p>
        <p>
          <label for="email">E-mail</label>
          <input name="email" type="text" id="email" size="30" maxlength="100" onfocus="active(email)" onblur="deActive(email)" />
      </p>

Here is my javascript

// makes a text field turn white on focus
function active(field)
    {
        var field = document.getElementById(field);
        field.style.backgroundColor="#FFF";
    }
    
// makes a text field turn light grey on blur
function deActive(field)
    {
        var field = document.getElementById(field);
        field.style.backgroundColor="#F2F2F2";
    }

When clicking on 'email', it doesnt change colour. 'name' works perfectly though?

Also, the error message that comes up in Firefox is 'field has no properties'

Any ideas whats wrong? Thanks

Strings should be quoted, remember. I'm not sure why the name would work and not the email, but just try quoting the ID's you pass.

onfocus="active('email');"
onblur="deActive('email');"

Ahhh thanks thats fixed it! I have no idea why the name box was working properly though without the quotes?? Maybe because it was the first one in the form or something??

I ALWAYS get confused whether to pass quotes or not!

Not sure why the name worked. If you really want to know, try just alert(name) or something and see what the value is The only thing I can think of is if you had some other JS on the page that set a 'name' variable.

As for quotes, just remember that ALL strings must be quoted. There's no exception to the rule. If they aren't quoted then JS will think it's a variable. (And if the variable doesn't exist, then it will be undefined, which is why the code errored out).