IE 4 causing "errors on page"

[GoogleCodeExporter]

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Load the test suite in IE 4 ( I use http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE on
Win XP )
2. Notice "Syntax errors occured on page".
3.

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
I know that IE 4 and lower are really annoying old crap, but I'd still like
to see just the alternative content without any warnings.

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
Tried either 1.5 ( http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/swfobject.html ),
2.0 or 2.1 test suites at http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/wiki/test_suite

Please provide any additional information below.
IE 4 doesn't seem to know anything about exceptions and reports syntax
error on first try-catch block.

Maybe the only 

Original issue reported on code.google.com by mailtomu...@gmail.com on 8 Jul 2008 at 11:03

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Any bug report that does not use an original browser software configuration 
(emulated
software, inlcuding software like multiple IE, is not reliable for testing 
purposes)
is invalid. So unless you can come up with an original OS + original browser 
setup,
we will not consider the report.

SWFObject only runs if a browser supports the W3C DOM, e.g. it checks for the
availability of document.getElementById, document.getElementsByTagName and
document.createElement, of which IE4 should support none (it had doument.all
implemented as its main DOM accessor), so it should not run in IE4 and always 
show
alternative content.

If you would need to support IE4 as a web author, you could additioanlly 
specify the
JavaScript version in your script tag, so a possible old browser will not 
interpret
newer code.

But why should you? IE4 is dead and has been buried a long time ago, why dig up 
a
dead body?

Original comment by bobbyvandersluis on 9 Jul 2008 at 8:57

• Changed state: Invalid

[GoogleCodeExporter]

It really chokes on try... catch block. SYNTAX ERROR, so the script in fact 
never
executes (to check for document.* availabilities).

I'm working on some kind of and ad-server, using swfobject to embed flash 
banners.
I'm not crazy to support IE4 and I don't mind if the users won't see our ads. I 
just
don't want anyone with ANY browser getting script syntax errors displayed 
because of
my code.

I will make my own workarounds then.

Original comment by mailtomu...@gmail.com on 9 Jul 2008 at 11:16

[GoogleCodeExporter]

IE5 includes JScript version 5.0 which is equivalent to JavaScript version 1.4, 
so
when you use the language attribute of the scipt tag to match version 1.4, IE4 
should
not interpret the script at all anymore. Just note that the language attribute 
has
been deprecated since HTML4 and is not supported in XHTML 1.0 Strict DTD.

Original comment by bobbyvandersluis on 9 Jul 2008 at 12:31