 in a recent project at work i had to add in functionality so that a user could see what they had typed in a password field when they click a link one would think that it is as easy as using javascript to change the type attribute but that of course doesnt work in ie virtually all of the jquery plugins that i found used a checkbox instead of a link to toggle between the two states so i set out to write my own if you just want to get to the code you can download the plugin from github or check out the demo this plugin works by adding a text field that takes the value of what is typed into the password field then when the link is clicked the password field is hidden and the text field is shown the markup in the demo well just start with a simple form form action= ol class= forms li label for= username username label input type= text id= username li li label for= password password label input type= password id= password class= password li li class= buttons button type= submit submit button li ol form add a little style in the design that i was working on the link to show the password actually sat on top of the password input field so we just need to add a little bit of css to make that happen forms li position relative show password link display block position absolute z index 11 password showing position absolute z index 10 by default the link to show the password has the class of show password link but that can be changed in the plugin options also the password showing class is added to the text field that is used to show the password but again that can be changed via the plugin options and now javascript takes over to get started you will need to include jquery and my plugin script type= text javascript src= scripts jquery js script script type= text javascript src= scripts jquery showpassword min js script then you can instantiate it like this $ document ready function $ password showpassword options linkclass show password link class for the toggle link linktext show text for the toggle link showpasswordlinktext hide text for the toggle link when password is not masked showpasswordinputclass password showing class for the text input that will show the password linkrightoffset 0 offset for the link from the right of parent linktopoffset 0 offset for the link from the top of parent so there you have it check out the demo and download the plugin from github 