183776 - multiple textboxes, setAttribute("value", xxx) causes elements to be disabled until a reflow

Status: NEW

(Core :: Layout: Form Controls, defect)

Description

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

fix for #157210 caused bug #179412

here's some background:

in mozilla mail, in the message search dialog, we have a xbl widget searchvalue
(see mailWidgets.xml)

it has two textboxes.

in the xbl widget ctor, we were doing .setAttribute("value") on the second one.

so when the search dialog comes up, certain UI elements were disabled.
(to enable them, you could resize, which probably causes a reflow which fixes
the problem.)

the two text boxes and the .setAttribute() along with the change for #157210
makes it so on linux, we appear to not be doing a reflow where we were before
(and note, win32 and mac were ok, they might have extra reflows caused by
something else, so the problem was hidden.)

I fixed the bug by switching from .setAttribute("value",xxx) to .value = xxx

but I worry that:

1)  there's a real bug here
2)  it will pop up again (or it's already somewhere else in the app)

Comment 1

[[e-mail]]

Personally I don't understand why .setAttribute("value") ever worked...

Comment 2

[[e-mail]]

bz told me that it's supposed to work until you change the real .value

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Though see bug 184732