Testing: form fields don’t display content in Safari in cloned node
The code for the 3 column layout for this blog is partly borrowed from smokinggun.com and iht.com. However now I see why they don’t put images and form elements in the article body itself!
The images and text area fields make it difficult for the script to calculate a good 1/3 column height to correctly position the duplicate columns vertically, and I’m having problems with Safari not showing the contents of text-area form fields within the article layers. I believe it has something to do with the fact that Safari uses the Apple web widgets instead of standard form widgets. Perhaps the text is on another layer that I’m not aware of.
It will take some time to work out a solution, so bear with me. I’m going to make the code in relevant pages accessible as soon as possible.
Below are some test form elements to see what Safari does with them.
I believe I’ve found the answer. The way the article is copied into three columns is using the cloneNode method. According to this article:
Document Object Model Core
“Cloning an Element copies all attributes and their values, including those generated by the XML processor to represent defaulted attributes, but this method does not copy any text it contains unless it is a deep clone, since the text is contained in a child Text node. ” Therefore it may not copy the content of a text area, but only the “value” attribute of a single line textfield, since it is within the tag, not part of the content of the field.
April 22: After a recent update to Mac OSX, bringing Safari to version 1.3 (v312), the contents of cloned textareas now display! Thank you Apple!