Input boxes with transparent background are not clickable in IE8

user_154467 0
Viewed 90384

I have an absolutely positioned input box in a form. The input box has transparent background:

.form-page input[type="text"] {
    border: none;
    background-color: transparent;
    /* Other stuff: font-weight, font-size */
}

Surprisingly, I cannot select this input box by clicking on it in IE8. It works perfectly in Firefox however. The same happens for background: none. When I change the background color:

    background-color: red;

It works fine, so this is issue associated with transparent background. Setting a border makes the input box selectable by clicking on its border only.

Is there a workaround to have clickable input box with transparent background working in IE8?

Update: Example. Uncomment background-color and the inputbox is selectable. You can also click on the select box, and focus the input box by pressing Shift+Tab.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html><head></head><body>

<style type="text/css">
  input[type="text"] {
    border: none;
    background: transparent;
    /*background-color: blue;*/
  }
  #elem528 { position:absolute; left:155px; top:164px; width:60px; height:20px; }
  #elem529 { position:absolute; left:218px; top:164px; width:40px; height:20px; }
</style>

<img src="xxx.png" alt="" width="1000" height="1000">
<input id="elem528" maxlength="7" type="text">
<select id="elem529"></select>

</body></html>
inputbox internet-explorer-8 internet-explorer css html
14 Answers

I am unable to reproduce such a problem in IE8. Full test case? Are you sure there's not a layering problem causing some other transparent element to cover the clickable area?

Does setting background-image make a difference? What about to a transparent GIF?

ETA: Curious! It's actually an IE7 bug. For me, your example exhibits the described behaviour in IE7, but in IE8 it's only when in EmulateIE7 mode; in IE8 native rendering it's fixed. You'll generally want to make sure you don't fall back to IE7 rendering by using a suitable X-UA-Compatible header/meta; however, yes, setting the background-image to a transparent GIF fixed the problem for me. Tsk, we still need the blank GIF even in this day and age, huh?

user_189360

You have to define a (transparent) background image.

Just in case someone would be interested. One of suggested workarounds....

user_1544670

Please include the html for the input element.

How did you define the input element? The code below works in IE8 (IE 8.0.7600 Windows). I tried this in IE8 and was able to 'select' the input area just fine.

<html>

<head>

<style>
.form-page input[type="text"] {
        border: none;
        background-color: transparent;
        /* Other stuff: font-weight, font-size */
}
</style>
</head>

<body>

<input type="text" name="test" value="test" id="test"/>

</body>
</html>
user_2501200

IE in its infinite wisdom is deciding not to render the item because it thinks there is nothing to render. There are numerous ways to address this but basically you'll need to give IE something to chew on.

Adding a 'value=x' to the input tag itself definitely works. But more than likely it's not the best solution. A simple, color:black (without the focus) allows the element to be tabbed to. Adding ':focus' to the input style allows the element to render.

Try this:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html><head></head><body>

<style type="text/css">
  input[type="text"]:focus {
    border: none;
    background: transparent;
    /*background-color: blue;*/
  }
  #elem528 { position:absolute; left:155px; top:164px; width:60px; height:20px; }
  #elem529 { position:absolute; left:218px; top:164px; width:40px; height:20px; }
</style>

<img src="xxx.png" alt="" width="1000" height="1000">
<input id="elem528" maxlength="7" type="text">
<select id="elem529"></select>

</body></html>
user_2501200

It may seem strange but you should try explicitly specifying the z-index of the elements involved. This should force the input to render on top of the element with the background color/image applied to it.

user_2306490
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