Hello,

Have you checked 

PB Toolbox – The most powerful toolbox for Powerbuilder (home.blog) ?

They have it as Material Design.   

HTH

Happiness Always
BKR Sivaprakash

I presume the desire is to emulate a web page/app interface.

While it is possible to come close to approximating this feature, the development effort it takes to create it and the complexity of making trivial changes makes it unworkable, in my opinion.

Here's an example freeform DataWindow I threw together this evening. The single column's name is "userinput":

When I click in the first row and supply some data:

No "floating text" appears (yet), because the DW's Edit Control still has input focus and the data has not been placed into the primary buffer.

When I tab out to the next row:

Now the data has been placed into row 1.

In order to make this example appear similar to the examples in the APEX examples (I found the same URL that Arnd found), I had to set up the following:

1. Create a column DWObject with transparent background and no border.
2. Simulate the box border with four lines. This is necessary because a rectangle DWObject does not support transparent background. Because PB always places the text/data vertically near the top border of the column, the PB-supplied box border is not workable.
3. Create a static text DWObject for the placeholder text, with transparent background, no border and dark grey text.
4. Move the placeholder text DWObject to the back of the drawing order.
5. Supply an expression for the Visible property of the placeholder text DWObject that hides it when the column contains data.
6. Create a static text DWObject for the floating text, reduced point size, no border and transparent background.
7. Move the floating text DWObject to the back of the drawing order
8. Supply an expression for the Visible property of the floating text DWObject that shows it when the column contains data.

So, yes, technically possible, but I would lead a developer coup against management if I was tasked with implementing this in an actual, real-life application.

<soapbox> Some years back, I was excited when I heard Appeon was going to support window controls that had an updated look-and-feel. When this was actually implemented as Themes, I was immensely disappointed for a variety of reasons I won't go into here. I would still love to see new controls that have a modern user interface AND support themes, so that it would be possible to update an application's user interface without having to accept the loss of interface flexibility that comes with themes. As a lifelong resident of Real-ville, I'm not holding out any hope that I'll see it come to pass. </soapbox>

are you talking about the placeholder that is available for single line edits?  show a placeholder value in an editable field?

you can do that in a datawindow using format.

use ; for different formats based on the values. 

for a number, the 4th value is for null. 

for example: 

[general];[general];[general];*** missing ***

will display *** missing *** if the value is missing.  if the value exists, it will display the value.

there is no way to display the field name without typing it in.  You may need to escape characters that are formats (# for example) if you want the character to display and not show the format.  backslash is the escape.