I plugged the above verbatim into a test page and it worked fine -- the entered text was obscured (*****) as I'd expect.
Are you seeing any errors in the console?
Wait a sec, what? I used your original example verbatim and it worked fine with FireFox 2.0/Linux.
Regardless, doing this requires JavaScript, since it happens in the client browser.
BTW, you could get away from duplicating fields in your markup with something like this:
<%= text_field 'user', 'pwd', { :value => 'do something here', :size => 30, :onfocus => "swap_field_type(this)" } %>
function swap_field_type(field) { var parent = field.parentNode; var replacement = document.createElement('input'); replacement.type = 'password'; replacement.id = field.id; replacement.name = field.name; parent.replaceChild(replacement,field); replacement.focus(); }
FWIW,
