What makes IE6 not accept text in input boxes?

Question

I have 2 input boxes that are not disabled. When either gets focus no cursor is displayed and any text that you type in is not displayed. There are several events attached to these elements, but there are no js errors. Expected behavior occurs in IE7, IE8, FF2, FF3, Chrome, and Safari.

EDIT: Here is a code example of the events being attached. Note that I am using YUI 2.

YAHOO.util.Event.addListener(searchInputTop, 'focus', searchInputOnFocus);
YAHOO.util.Event.addListener(searchInputTop, 'blur', searchInputOnBlur);
searchInputOnBlur = function (e) 
{   
    if (e) 
    {   
        target = (e.target || e.srcElement);
    }   
    if (target && !target.value || target.value === "") 
    {   
        target.value = someDefault;
    }   
    target.className = 'someclass';
};  

searchInputOnFocus = function(e)
{   
    if (e) 
    {   
        target = (e.target || e.srcElement);
    }   
    if (target.value === currentDefaultText)
    {   
        target.value = ""; 
    }   
    target.className = "";
};

UPDATE:

I don't think any of my code has anything to do with it. Any page that I view in IE6 that has input boxes has the same behavior. I'm running IE6 by using Multiple IE's under Virtual box with Win Xp service pack 3.

Answer 1

I've had this exact same problem too. In my case it didn't even matter on which website I was, there wasn't a single textbox where I could enter text...

Answer 2

Maybe this can help you pinpoint the source of your problem:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Web_Development/Web_Languages-Standards/CSS/Q_23629941.html

Answer 3

One likely explanation is that IE is stretching some transparent element such that it covers the input fields, due to one of its many weird CSS and layout bugs. Use a DOM inspector such as the IE Developer Toolbar to see if something is overlaid on them.

(I've linked to the Wikipedia page for the product as that's got a better chance of staying at the same URL for a while than one of those weird microsoft.com URLS with a thirty-two-digit hexadecimal number after it. The link to today's location for the download page on microsoft.com is at the bottom.)

Answer 4

The problem is in MultipleIE itself.

Here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/829665/ie6-forms-focus-disabled-on-input-fields-multiple-ies-after-ie8

someone suggested to uninstall MultipleIE and then try to access the files through Program Files (the files remain after the uninstall).

Another way to do it is installing "Internet Explorer Collection" instead of MultipleIE's.

(http://finalbuilds.edskes.net/iecollection.htm)

Hope this solves your issue.

Cheers