Debugging JS in IE7 is such a PITA. Please kill me.

[ZaneNBK]

Have to support IE7+ in my app due to corporate users and I'm trying to correct an issue that only occurs in IE7. I had forgotten you had to install other apps to do JS debugging (primarily Visual Studio). Why isn't IE7 dead yet? WHY? :'(

 

[smackababy]

Because the money it would cost to upgrade and train every user on IE8, 9, etc. is way more than forcing you to deal with how awful IE JS quirks and noncompliance of standards.

 

[ZaneNBK]

Because the money it would cost to upgrade and train every user on IE8, 9, etc. is way more than forcing you to deal with how awful IE JS quirks and noncompliance of standards.

It was a rhetorical question, I was just venting. Although, IE8 is very similar to IE7. From my experience it's more of an issue with ensuring compatibility with older software in large orgs than it is a training issue.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Have you tried forcing IE 8+ into compatibility mode? That might work as a first pass for fixing errors, then once the scripts run OK try again with real IE 7?

 

[ZaneNBK]

Have you tried forcing IE 8+ into compatibility mode? That might work as a first pass for fixing errors, then once the scripts run OK try again with real IE 7?

I had forgotten all about that ability but a friend reminded me earlier. Unfortunately neither IE8 or IE10 reproduce the error in IE7 mode. Downloading an IE9 VM to test that but I doubt it'll work either. Thanks for the suggestion though.

 

[Cogman]

I hate IE8 and below support (I'm sure that I'll hate IE9 in the future). Are you using Jquery? That lessens the pain of working with IE significantly (Unless you have a computationally complex script, then you are screwed).

Another thing that really helps with Javascript development in IE is GWT. Makes the cross browser problems much easier to deal with (Though, you won't ever touch if if you project is big enough).

 

[ZaneNBK]

I hate IE8 and below support. Are you using Jquery? That lessens the pain of working with IE significantly (Unless you have a computationally complex script, then you are screwed).

Yup, using jQuery and updated to the latest IE7 & IE8 supporting version. It saves me a ton of work especially when it comes to supporting old browsers. Just updating jQuery fixed an IE8 issue on that page but the IE7 one persists.

 

[ZaneNBK]

Installed Visual Studio in my IE7 VM and then installed updates out of habit. Hello IE9! !@#$@#! Uninstalling that update, now. Today is not going well.

Edit: Also, why does MS distribute IE8 with an XP VM that's only 1.2GB but distributes IE7 with a Vista VM that's over 3GB?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Because people still use XP

 

[ZaneNBK]

Because people still use XP

No, I meant they give you IE8 in a smaller XP image, which is good but put IE7 in a bloated Vista image when IE7 obviously works fine in XP. Just seems odd to have people download an extra 2GB.

Maybe they figure the pain of having to work with IE7 isn't enough, they had to throw some Vista pain in there too.

 

[GregGreen]

Suggestion that might help: 9 times out of 10 when I have an error in IE7 that doesn't exist in IE9's IE7 compatibility mode, it is either a trailing comma or a missing semicolon that every other browser either inserted for me or didn't care about.

You may have already looked for this, but if not, good luck!

 

[ZaneNBK]

Turns out the problem was that jQuery.find() wasn't working the same way with XML strings as it does in all the other browsers I support (IE7+, FF, Chrome). I ended up having to use an XMLDom object to load the XML string and parse it that way for just that one browser.

 

[Ken g6]

I feel your pain! Why does anyone use IE7 anymore? Any system that can run IE7 (meaning not Windows 2000) can run IE8. One of the main reasons I hate IE7 is that it doesn't support my favorite CSS pseudo-elements, :before and :after.

My only guess as to why some companies are still running IE7 is that they use internal software that requires IE7. D:

 

[ZaneNBK]

I feel your pain! Why does anyone use IE7 anymore? Any system that can run IE7 (meaning not Windows 2000) can run IE8. One of the main reasons I hate IE7 is that it doesn't support my favorite CSS pseudo-elements, :before and :after.

My only guess as to why some companies are still running IE7 is that they use internal software that requires IE7. D:

The software I develop piggy-backs on another major cloud-based system and we have to support whatever browsers they support. They dropped IE6 about 2 years ago, hopefully they'll drop IE7 support in the next year or so.