XPath expression for disabled input in IE7. Testing with Selenium - selenium

Question

My problem is very simple. I'm writing a Selenium test that MUST work with IE7. I have a HTML table with couple of rows and 3 columns:
Column 1 - contains a check box
Column 2 - contains a link
Column 3 - contains some free text
One (and ONLY one) of the checkboxes in the table is disabled. My task is to locate and click the link next to the disabled checkbox (on the row of the disabled checkbox). In FireFox this simple XPath expressions work fine:
//tr/td/input[#disabled]/../../td[2]/a
//tr/td/input[#disabled='disabled']/../../td[2]/a
But in IE7 the first expression clicks the top row no matter if the checkbox is enabled or disabled and the second one does not work.
Since the HTML document is very long I'm putting the important part below (as shown in FF):
<tr>
<td class="table_detail w e s center">
<input name="Delete_kG0KCgAMniwAAAEsxxgeUH0G" type="checkbox">
</td>
<td class="table_detail e s">
000000
</td>
<td class="table_detail e s">
some text
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="table_detail w e s center">
<input name="Delete_hooKCgAMi5AAAAEsFnQeUH0G" type="checkbox">
</td>
<td class="table_detail e s">
111111
</td>
<td class="table_detail e s">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="table_detail w e s center">
<input disabled="disabled" type="checkbox">
</td>
<td class="table_detail e s">
400086
</td>
<td class="table_detail e s">
</td>
</tr>
The last link should be clicked:
400086
We use the Java Selenium API in JUnit 3 tests. The test is something like:
public void testSomething()
{
...
selenium.click("//tr/td/input[#disabled]/../../td[2]/a");
//wait to load and then test something on the page that is opened.
...
}
This works in FF but not in IE7. In IE7 it clicks the link on the first row as if disabled is ignored. It also evaluates correct in XPather (FF plugin).
I would appreciate your help.
Thanks!

Answer 1

You have shown the HTML in FireFox, but you haven't shown the HTML in IE, is it the same?
Based upon the information provided I would use this locator:
//tr[td/input[#disabled='disabled']]/td/a
This finds a row that has a cell that contains a disabled input element, and then locates the cell that has an achor and pinpoints the anchor.
However as I cannot see the HTML markup in IE I have no idea if this is valid or not

Answer 2

For the record I was able to resolve the problem by using a DOM locator. Unfortunately it looks as ugly as:
dom=function getLinkNextToDisabled()
{
var addressesTable = document.getElementsByName('AddressList')[0].getElementsByTagName('table')[0].getElementsByTagName('table')[0];
var inputs = addressesTable.getElementsByTagName('input');
for (i = 0; i < inputs.length; i++)
{
if (inputs[i].disabled)
{
return inputs[i].parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('a')[0];
}
}
};
getLinkNextToDisabled();
Unfortunately code like this makes me sad, so I'm still open for any XPath solution that will work in IE7.
Regards!