Remove unnecessary placeholders on /settings pages

[quinnkeast]

Our content guidelines for actionable language specify that placeholders should be avoided except in specific situations.

There's a few places where we should remove placeholders altogether, or switch to using a helper.

• On the /settings/profile page, the display name and avatar URL fields have placeholders that duplicate the label. These should be removed and the field left empty.

• On the /settings/tokens/new page, the "What's this token for?" placeholder should be removed and instead placed as helper text.

CC @AlicjaSuska

[github-actions]

Heads up @AlicjaSuska @umpox @valerybugakov @5h1rU @pdubroy - the "team/frontend-platform" label was applied to this issue.

[AlicjaSuska]

Thank you for bringing this up @quinnkeast. In general, I think that leaving fields empty looks like a bug to many users as people are so used to seeing them, especially in short forms like this.

I think we should revisit this guideline. I agree that placeholder shouldn't be repeating the label though.

In this specific case I'd use the following placeholders (to explain the labels even better):

• Display name: Your name visible to other Sourcegraph users
• Avatar URL: Link to your profile picture

@quinnkeast wdyt about this proposition?

[quinnkeast]

I disagree on this one from a usability heuristic perspective. There's a fair bit of stuff out there on placeholders being harmful for usability or otherwise not great for accessibility. The redesign magnifies this, as the colour of the placeholders is easily mistaken as content in an already-filled field.

On a personal anecdotal level, I've found far more trouble in previous user testing with users thinking fields are already populated, than that there's a bug.

That people are used to seeing a bad pattern, in this case, feels like something we should challenge rather than follow.

[AlicjaSuska]

Maybe the problem is the placeholder color in this case? 🤔