Hi,
I ran a site for years using a javascript library for validating client-side forms and suddently with the arrival of IE7 and FF3, it looks like my validation is less effective. After some research, I found out that this was coming in a change in behaviour from the onChange event handler.
For example: <input type="text" name="whatever" value="test" onchange="return false;">
In this case, in IE6 and FF2, the user was not able to change the value of the input field because the return false statement in the onChange event handler was preventing it.
In IE7 / FF3, the behaviour works for the first time the user tries to change the value, but if he tries a second time, it will be allowed. Just like if the onChange trigger was fired and completed after the first time.
Does anyone have any idea of what is going on with this?
Thanks in advance for all your help.
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Hi Kayahr,
The purpose is not actually to disable it, I used that as an example. Actually, I want to validate user's input and prevent the change if validation fails.
Ex: <input type="text" name="whatever" onchange="return(validateF
As said, this was working perfectly for years before IE7 and FF3.
There are two kinds of validation you can do on a text box:
1. Validate on exit. Validation is only done when the user leaves the field. For this use the "onblur" event. In Firefox 3 it looks like that "onchange" now behaves exactly like "onblur". Don't know how IE7 reacts.
2. Validate on each key press. For this use the "onkeypress" event. In this event you also can return false to ignore the keypress if you think the keypress would lead to an invalid text field value. onkeypress is nice to prevent the user to enter other characters than numbers.
By the way: I just tried out onchange event in IE6, Safari, Google Chrome and Opera. In ALL of these browser the onchange event is only fired when the user leaves the edit box. So I have no idea why you think this was changed in IE7 and Firefox 3. Haven't tried Firefox 2 though...
Maybe you just remembered wrong and you have used onkeypress in the past instead of onchange?
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by: kayahrPosted on 2008-09-10 at 21:57:21ID: 22446427
This is a strange method to disable a text box. Is there a reason why you don't use the "disabled" attribute?
<input type="text" disabled="disabled" />
With this attribute (which works for ALL input elements in ALL browsers) the user is not able to change the value and the text box is "grayed out" to indicate this.
Another possibility is
<input type="text" readonly="readonly" />
This also prevents editing but the GUI style is different (Not "grayed out").