» Stupid IE 6 Bug #182478: Check boxes added through Javascript aren’t checked

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Aug 06

Stupid IE 6 Bug #182478: Check boxes added through Javascript aren’t checked

Tag: dom,html,ie,javascript,prototype,web — pmularien @ 9:44 pm

Straightforward explanation and solution of the IE checkbox bug here.

Just ran into this goofy issue recently. So, if you set the ‘checked’ attribute on a checkbox before it’s part of the DOM, in IE 6, the checkbox will not actually be checked. Brilliant!

Solution:

Set the checked attribute after adding the node to the DOM
Set the defaultChecked attribute to true prior to adding the node to the DOM

An example of this with Prototype (using solution #2, above) is:

        anElem.appendChild(new Element("input", 
                {'type':'checkbox','name':'mycb','checked':'checked','defaultChecked':'true'}));

Don’t forget to keep the ‘checked’ attribute in there so it works with other (good) browsers!

(For the overly literal among you, that isn’t really a bug number, it’s sarcasm.)

4 Responses to “Stupid IE 6 Bug #182478: Check boxes added through Javascript aren’t checked”

Michelle says:
August 7th, 2008 at 7:15 am

This bug (299) is tracked over at Web Bug track
http://webbugtrack.blogspot.com/2007/11/bug-299-setattribute-checked-does-not.html

It is just one of dozens of IE bugs wrapped up in bug 244
http://webbugtrack.blogspot.com/2007/08/bug-242-setattribute-doesnt-always-work.html

It should be noted that your bug affects radio buttons too, and also affects both when cloning nodes in the DOM. (they’ll become unchecked)

fwolle says:
February 27th, 2009 at 9:49 am

you can set the checkbox as checked, after the append.

anElem.appendChild(var e=new Element("input", 
                {'type':'checkbox','name':'mycb','checked':'checked','defaultChecked':'true'}));
        e.checked=true;

fwolle says:
February 27th, 2009 at 10:07 am

oops, please remove my last post
Matt says:
July 16th, 2010 at 10:26 am

Thanks for the post! I’ve been struggling with IE6 and checkboxes for ages.