Curious about grayed-out text in some replies

[DisgustipatedinCA]

I'm sure this question has been asked, but I could not find the answer. Does anyone know why I occasionally see the text I'm typing in light gray instead of black? This just happened as I was replying to a thread. I've seen it before, but it just happens occasionally, and I cannot understand the rhyme or reason. My post still gets posted--no problems there. I'm just curious as to why this happens. Thank you.

[arcane1]

1. That's happened to be too, and I have no idea why.

I guess my reply isn't very helpful

[DisgustipatedinCA]

2. It is helpful....it lets me know others are wondering about this too.

And of course, it lets me know it's also happening to other people.

thanks for the reply.

[arcane1]

4. I use Firefox, how about you?

Maybe it's a browser thing..?

[DisgustipatedinCA]

5. Good point. Yes, I'm using Firefox at work.

I use Chrome at home (and on phone & tablet)...but now I can't remember if this has happened on a non-Firefox browser. Hmmmm...

[cbayer]

3. It happens to me occasionally as well. I don't know why and it

doesn't seem to effect functionality.

[petronius]

6. I get that sometimes, usually when I'm entering the title

I assumed it was FireFox thing. It also sometimes seems to go all black text while I'm typing, but drop to gray when I pause (and it's not the screen brightness changing). Glad you asked - I'll be watching this thread for an answer...

[jarien21]

7. That explains it

I was wondering the same thing.

[ManiacJoe]

9. I have had this happen to me multiple times.

Each time I started typing in the subject line before the entire page was displayed (slow DU servers). Based on this, my best guess for the cause is that the full content of HTML, CSS, and javascript has not been fully downloaded and processed causing minor weirdness.

[Make7]

10. I believe I may have figured this out.

In the LBN forum they have an extra script (textfield-replace.js) on the post pages where your text is entered. This is for the text entry when starting a thread - the prompts in the text fields are colored gray and then change to black when you enter your own text.

Although that script should probably only load on the page to start a thread, it also loads when posting a reply (most likely since the query portion of their respective URL's start with the same text: ?com=post&forum=1014). Usually it doesn't affect anything because the script has loaded and is running before you can start entering in any text - however, since the script doesn't run until the page fully loads, if there is something causing the page load to be slower than usual (e.g. a large image, slow connection, etc.), it is possible to begin entering text while some elements on the page are still loading - which will cause the text to be changed to gray when the textfield-replace.js script starts running after the page finishes loading.

The few obvious solutions are: only have the script load on the page to start threads by doing a more accurate server side URL match or changing the script to run when the DOM has loaded instead of waiting for a complete page load or inserting the script on the page after the input form so it executes right after the text field elements are loaded. Since the script is only needed when starting a thread, the first solution seems logical enough - although changing when the script starts running is probably not a bad idea in any case.

Has anyone ever seen this problem in a forum other than LBN? If so, my theory is probably incorrect - [font style="color:#777;"]although I can recreate the issue consistently for reply titles in LBN[/font] - so there is an issue there regardless.

[petronius]

11. I've been paying attention since this thread started, and I've had it happen

twice in LBN and never elsewhere...