jQuery val() on input field only works when preceded by alert()

[brixton]

Hi,

I've stumpled upon a very weird issue.

The situation is that I'm styling my own file input field, by replacing it with a text field and a button, lying below the original file input, which in turn has been given an opacity of 0. It looks great. However, when a file is selected I want to update my new "fake" text field with the file name.

This works, but only when the val() command is preceded by an alert!

Code:

jQuery('input[type=file]').wrap('<div class="fileinputholder" style="position:relative;" />');
            jQuery('input[type=file]').attr("style","position:absolute; z-index:2; opacity:0; filter:alpha(opacity: 0);");
            jQuery('div.fileinputholder').each(function(){
                jQuery(this).append('<input type="text" size="40" style="position:absolute;top:0px;left:0px;" /><img style="position:absolute; top:0px; left:270px;" src="images/browse.png" alt="browse" />');
            });
            jQuery('input[type=file]').each(function(){
                jQuery(this).change(function(){
// UNCOMMENTING THE BELOW MAKES THE VAL() COMMAND WORK!                    
//alert('changed');
jQuery(this).next().val(jQuery(this).val());
                });
            });

Any ideas? :)