Labels and hidden fields in Internet Explorer (and jquery)

Peter Duijnstee picture Peter Duijnstee · Jun 18, 2010 · Viewed 12.9k times · Source

I'm having trouble checking hidden checkboxes in IE. This is the base html:

<input id="groups_ids_1" name="group_ids[]" type="checkbox" value="1" />
<label for="groups_ids_1">Display</label>

This works fine, but if I then hide the checkboxes using either

$('input[type=checkbox]').hide();

or

$('input[type=checkbox]').css('visibility', 'hidden');

Clicking the label no longer checks the checkbox in IE. Of course it works fine in Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

Answer

Marc Diethelm picture Marc Diethelm · Mar 7, 2012

Hidden checkboxes don't receive events in IE version below 9. My generalized solution is as follows:

/* hide checkboxes */
input[type=checkbox] {
    visibility: hidden;
    position: absolute; /* move out of document flow */
}
/* ie8-: hidden inputs don't receive events, move out of viewport */
.lt-ie9 input[type=checkbox] {
    visibility: visible;
    top: -50px;
}

Don't move the inputs to the left or the page will jump in IE when the input receives focus! .lt-ie8 is a class that is set on the HTML tag for old IE versions in this manner: (see eg: https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/blob/master/index.html)

<!--[if IE 8]>  <html class="no-js lt-ie9" lang="en"> <![endif]-->

But you can use your preferred method in order to apply the properties in the second rule to old IE version only. Applying the rules via JS should work too, as you seem to be doing.