28 augustus
IE 8 beta 2 - methods of "window.external" object throws exception
Update 15 Dec, 2008: This issue disappeared in IE8 partner build ('Pre-RC1') 8.0.6001.18343
In continuation to the post about IE 8 beta 1 issue, I figured that I still have the problem in my system even after upgrading to IE 8 beta 2. Only this time, I was able to generalize the problem very much.
Here’s what I found:
The problem is that window.external object (in JavaScript) doesn’t seem to have the correct reference to one of browser object (or at least that’s what I think so). Hence all methods of this object throws me an runtime script error.
Because of this, following actions fail in IE 8 beta 2 for me
- Opening New tab – the previous post
Though this doesn’t happen every time, but when it happens the code breaks at
window.external.BuildNewTabPage();
- Adding Service (Search provider, accelerators, etc) from http://www.ieaddons.com/en/searchproviders/
breaks at
window.external.AddSearchProvider();
window.external.addService();
- The very first time, I open IE 8 beta 2 or the once after I 'reset' settings and open the browser again, in the 'Customize Search providers' & 'Customize Accelerators' page.
- Especially in the 'Add Search Provider' page, in the section 'Create Your Own', when I add a custom search, it throws me an error "Unable to add search provider. The Create Your Own tool requires Internet Explorer. [32811]". See screenshot 3 below.
My UserAgent
I thought probably my UserAgent string is corrupt, but here it is… and I don’t see any problem with this.
“Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; InfoPath.1;
.NET CLR 2.0.50727; FDM; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)”
Screenshots:
(1) 
This screenshot is taken in the IE Gallery web site with error pop up from the site & the ‘About Dialog’. This is just a consequence the the problem I mentioned above, that window.external is not having correct reference. See code in below screenshot to understand.
(2) 
This screenshot shows the exception details & the point were the exception is thrown in the IE Gallery website. The error number is “-2147319765”. A quick search on the web lead to nowhere.
(3) 
This happens in the ‘Add Search Provider’ –> Create Your Own search provider section. It’s strange that it says that I need IE to run this. 
Seeking help at the IE Forum
I’m (again) going to post the problem in IE forum and this time I hope to see a different answer. The solution given to my previous post didn’t work at all.
Update: The issue is posted in IE Forum here.
Does anybody experience same issue in your system? Comment back…
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