Category: Internet Explorer

Prevent float drop in IE

Internet Explorer’s propensity to drop floated elements adds time to site development, and sometimes causes a page to appear blank if the floated content drops below the window “fold”. Ignoring the problem and designing only for standards-adhering browsers is not always possible, particularly in enterprise environments where IE (and not always the latest version) is the only officially supported standard. Of course, other browsers are being used as well.

I’ve finally came across a fix that appears to work well cross-platform, thanks to Thierry Koblentz in the YUIblog.

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Set up a Cron job in Windows to run an ASP script

If you are used to Linux environments, and working on a web application which needs to execute a function at regular intervals, you’d use a cron job. On Windows, you’d use a scheduled task instead. There is one part of the process that isn’t obvious, so here are the steps involved:

  1. Create the web page that executes the desired tasks – sending email, creating files, etc. For example, I have some ASP scripts that create RSS and iCal feeds from a proprietary database, that need to run daily. Record the URL for later.
  2. You will also need a domain account that can run the task, or a server account that can be used in perpetuity to run these types of tasks. I usually have a “fake” account that will never expire created for this type of thing.
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Defeat the IE 7 z-index bug

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The z-index bug in action

Although Internet Explorer 8 has been widely adopted, IE 7 is still the browser in use at my office, so all new projects must be compatible with it. Even though IE7 was already obsolete when we adopted it, it was a wonderful change from IE 6, because of the reduced need for CSS and javascript hacks, workarounds and compromises in general.

So it was a surprise to realize that an old Internet Explorer 6 stylesheet problem, the “z-index bug” still lingers on. You’ll know you’ve hit this bug when your drop-down menus fall UNDER elements that are lower down on the page. (…I should add: and there are no iframes or frames on the page).

There are several sites that do a fantastic job of telling you exactly why this happens. I’m just going to tell you how to fix it. In fact, if you want to jump to the fix right now, click here

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IE 7 & 8: Navigation to the webpage was cancelled, revisited

If you get the error “Navigation to the webpage was cancelled” while browsing, chances are a security setting needs to be corrected. In a previous post, I suggested a “scorched earth” settings-reset procedure, but I’ve found that that isn’t always sufficient. Sometimes the settings need to be relaxed beyond factory defaults.

For instance, our Learning Management System (LMS) uses mixed https and http content, and Internet Explorer is often set to block mixed content entirely. Sometimes it will prompt the user but often it will simply give the error “Navigation to the webpage was cancelled.” In the case of our LMS, a large clue to what is going on is that the login page appears completely unstyled, because the style sheets and images are part of the blocked content. 

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jQuery UI Accordion does not function in IE7/WinXP

The Accordion is one of the handy interface widgets that can be generated using jQuery UI. There are several optional settings you can add into the function call, including animation, auto-height, etc. If you find it is not working on IE7try adding “animated:false” as one of the options.

If you are running a debugger on IE, and see the error “invalid option on line 486” this is definitely the problem.

Screen shot 2009-12-10 at 12.37.41 PM.jpg

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