joefiorini/jquery-placeholder — comment on commit 76b412809dc86b9bff1b9a37d6397da5d9cef40a
File:  line 0
By stevemayhew:

Joe,
Give this a try: https://github.com/egnyte/jquery-placeholder/commit/409c9cfa2171b729afcfb806441d6c3b050824f7
With this you should be able to use $(form).serialize() directly. Basically what it does is use the valHooks to override jQuery's default get for input's and textarea's so if they are placeholder then val() return's empty string always. When the hook returns undefined jQuery just falls back to the internal behavior (in this case to reference the value property of the element directly).

It's working fine for me with IE8/WidowsXP and on Mac with FF6, Chrome 7 and Safari 5.1.2. With no changes to any other jQuery pluggins.

Let me know.