I ran a test with the following call and it works on IE7.
Using 1.5.3 build.

public String focusInputTextUserRequestFocus()

If you can reproduce this, please re-open.

doesn't work in IE6

I tested Address Demo, which uses a requestFocus() call on the combo box for State when an ambiguous city name is entered. To duplicate the test, enter 'Ashville' for the city, and click to the first name field. The State input will change to a dropdown and focus will be shifted to that.

I tested 1.5.3, 1.6.0DR2, and the head of the repo, and the focus switched fine in both IE6 and Firefox.

Using the Address demo on IE7 with 1.5.3 and 1.6 DR#2 fails.

This works in head IE6, FF2, IE7.

the failure to apply focus is only reproducible when the component is moving from an unrendered to a rendered state on the same lifecycle pass

1. open /support-3882/
2. click 'focus input'

• when being rendered on the same pass, the focus isn't applied
  3. click 'toggle hide input' so that the input is in the rendered state
  4. click 'focus input'
• the input will now focus

I had to add a slight delay to the focus call (100ms). IE 6 and 7 now focus properly.

r13596

A short delay prior to setting focus is unlikely to have any undesirable side effects (outside of focus behavior) as the delay wouldn't block anything else from occurring.

However, the delay may mean that there is a period of time where nothing is focused, yet the user is expecting some component to be focused. We should take care to ensure that rapid focus operations on the part of the user aren't interfered with by setting the focus later.

In the case where a user changes focus before the server focus call is executed, the server focus call is ignored. Focus is only moved if the user is not interacting with the browser. (Keypress, or mouse click)

Added fix to 1.5 branch. r13650