Nikolai Mavrenkov already created a good description of the problem on Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36893449/textarea-placeholder-isnt-shown-in-ie-11-being-rendered-using-react
I just can confirm it breaks in IE11, but works in IE10 (and other browsers) with React v15.0.2.
Confirmed... and really weird. I'm trying to reproduce it outside of React and I can't. So I'm not really sure what could be causing this.
Yet another bug which is automatically fixed by https://github.com/facebook/react/pull/6406
Demo without fix: https://jsfiddle.net/6tefu8g7/
Demo with fix: http://jsfiddle.net/m2ke4chf/
Can we PLEASE get that PR reviewed/merged. cc @facebook/react-core
@jimfb I have a similar issue where the textarea would treat the initial value as the placeholder text. Demo here (test in IE11). I'm I correct in guessing this is directly related to the issue above, or is this another issue?
@AnderssonChristian value={this.state.placeholderValue}
@syranide pardon? :)
@AnderssonChristian Brain shortcircuit, I thought you were setting the value to the placerholder text. Yeah I believe the error you're seeing is related to the error mentioned here and fixed.
I'm seeing this bug again in React 15.3.0 (and also in 15.3.1)
Here's a small fiddle displaying the issue: https://jsfiddle.net/94g0kbhp/2/
How it looks in Chrome on OS X: 
How it looks in IE11 on Windows 10: 
IE11 version: 11.0.10240.16384
@toonvanacker it worked fine for me in IE11.0.9600.18097
I'm seeing this again as well, +1 @toonvanacker
Yup i think this issue needs to be reopened @jimfb as you can easily reproduce it on the IE11 windows 10. Maybe add a test for it or something? Its the only thing still keeping me on 0.14 ...
I was able to reproduce this using the latest release, https://jsfiddle.net/pfe7yq65/.
I'll reopen this since it's still an issue 馃憤
I was able to reproduce the issue outside of React, see https://jsfiddle.net/vovuant7/
var root = document.getElementById('root');
var textarea = document.createElement('textarea');
textarea.setAttribute('placeholder', 'Testing 1, 2, 3');
textarea.textContent = '';
root.appendChild(textarea)
The issue is that we are calling setTextContent on the node because the tree.text is '' when it should be null.
Setting textContent on a <textarea/> will overwrite the placeholder until it is focused/blurred, after which it will restore the placeholder text. This is not the case in other browsers I've tested.
I'll look into this more.
It looks like this may still be an issue rearing it's ugly head again. We are using React 15.4.1 and are seeing this behavior in ie11.
@Lkroner The bug was fixed in master, not in 15.4.1.
This should now be fixed in 15.4.2.
Please verify.
Or maybe not given comments in https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/8546. I鈥檓 confused, delegating to @aweary.
Has there been a regression in 16.0.0? I'm getting this issue in IE11 Windows 10.
Please file a new issue with details. Old issues have a lot of outdated info and are hard to track.
Most helpful comment
I'm seeing this bug again in React 15.3.0 (and also in 15.3.1)
Here's a small fiddle displaying the issue: https://jsfiddle.net/94g0kbhp/2/

How it looks in Chrome on OS X:
How it looks in IE11 on Windows 10:
IE11 version: 11.0.10240.16384