Changing The Text Color Of An Input Element (IE)?

How on earth do you use javacript to change the text color of an input element, and have it work with IE??? I've tried numerous solutions. All of them work on browsers such as Mozilla. But none of them work on IE.

This works in every browser I've tried besides IE:

var whatever = document.createElement( 'input' );
whatever.type = 'text'
// (more code)...
whatever.style.color = 'black'

This also works for other browsers besides IE:

whatever.style.cssText = 'color:black;'

I've tried other things as well. Nothing works in IE. Is there anyway
to change the text color inside an input box dynamically, and have it
work in IE?