IE 8 Issues with hidden element focus

[chris-mullins]

I was having some problems with IE 8. The current demo site is not working in IE8. It works in IE 9 IE8 compatibility mode, but not in a real IE8.

There is an error on:
$(t).focus();

Which is around line 1356 or so.

The error is due to the element t being hidden or not displayed, apparently IE8 does not like when you try to focus on hidden elements.

It did not seem to be a terribly important line. I tried that line wrapping in a try-catch, which took care of the error, but the keyboard did not work at all. I tried commented out the line instead and then it started working.

I have no idea what this is supposed to be doing. I figured if it was important then best to let it run if it can so I wrapped in it in some checks to test if the browser was IE 8 or less, and if the element is actually visible, so the line should run except when it is currently causing the error.

Here is my current workaround.

//if the browser is ie and the version is less than 9 and the element is not visible skip this code
if (!($.browser.msie &amp;&amp; parseInt($.browser.version, 10) < 9 ) && !$(t).is(":visible") ) {
$(t).focus();
}

[Mottie]

Thanks! I don't have the real IE8 installed, so this helps alot!

Though, I think instead of browser sniffing, I'll just check for visibility.

[chris-mullins]

yeah that might be better I was not sure what it was doing so I was trying to play it safe

[Mottie]

Am I looking at that wrong, or should that be

if ($(t).is(':visible')) { $(t).focus(); }

Not sure why there's a not (!) in there

[chris-mullins]

Yeah that would work. I was trying to be very specific because I don't know the purpose of that code, so to keep the code working as much like it was I was addressing only ie8 hidden elements which were causing the error.

So essentially my work around says:
if not ( ie8 or less and element is hidden) do the focus

Instead you are saying
if (element is visible) the do the focus

I will be testing on IE8 more so I will be on the lookout for any new releases, and I will let you know if I see any other problems.

[Mottie]

Thanks!

Actually that focus is needed to give the input area focus after it sets the cursor position.

What I'm not getting is why IE8 is ignoring the check at line 1338 which returns if the element is hidden