357806 - checkboxes rendered from <listcell type="checkbox"/> are unusable

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 263273

(Core :: XUL, defect)

Description

[Sebastian Winkler]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061023 Camino/1.1a1+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061023 Camino/1.1a1+

Contrary to their single-column counterparts, from <listitem type="checkbox"/>, checkboxes rendered from <listcell type="checkbox"/> do not respond to user actions.
It is thus currently not possible to author multi-column listboxes with checkboxes in, what I perceive as, the preferred way.
There is a work-around to this issue, as pointed out to me by Daniel Worthington (http://danielworthington.com/articles/checkboxes-inside-lists-controls-that-actually-work), by placing <checkbox/>-elements directly into the <listitem/>-elements, but it additionally requires the checkboxes to be styled position:relative to work and its functionality is not consistent with that of the single-column <listitem type="checkbox"/>-elements — especially when manipulated using the keyboard.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Sebastian Winkler]

Attachment: test case

Comment 2

[Sebastian Winkler]

From a comment on XULPlanet (http://www.xulplanet.com/references/elemref/ref_listcell.html#cmnote-2) I learned that positioning the embedded <checkbox/>-element is unnecessary when placing  allowevents="true" on its <listitem>-parent.
I'll update the test case to dispense with the stylesheet.

Comment 3

[Sebastian Winkler]

Attachment: updated test case

Comment 4

[:Mook]

You actually want a <treecol cycler="true"/> (see: http://www.xulplanet.com/references/elemref/ref_treecol.html#attr_cycler )  This is what mailnews does (for the read/unread markers), I believe.

Your first attachment's "working" version doesn't work on trunk either :)  Just thought you might want to know...

Also, the blog post seems to be at http://danielworthington.com/articles/checkboxes-inside-lists-controls

Comment 5

[Sebastian Winkler]

(In reply to comment #4)
> You actually want a <treecol cycler="true"/> (see:
> http://www.xulplanet.com/references/elemref/ref_treecol.html#attr_cycler ) 
> This is what mailnews does (for the read/unread markers), I believe.

Honestly, I don't know, as I haven't been able to get a cycler-column working yet. (Does it require extra attributes or styling like <treecol type="checkbox">?)
But really, what I want is a multi-column version of <listitem type="checkbox"/>, consistent in look and behavior.

> Your first attachment's "working" version doesn't work on trunk either :)  Just
> thought you might want to know...

That's right. I forgot to mention this.
 
> Also, the blog post seems to be at
> http://danielworthington.com/articles/checkboxes-inside-lists-controls

Well, I guess it moved :)

Comment 6

[Kai Liu]

Found this bug while trying to find out why the type="checkbox" attribute documented at developer.mozilla.org does not work... I guess those docs need to be updated.