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Internet Explorer Sucks

I spent about an hour troubleshooting why a stupid popup window wouldn’t work in IE. I tried everything – I renamed the window. I added “void” to the var in the js function calling it. I moved the script inline, and then to a separate script page. I tried everythng, but would always get the same nonsense error:

Error: Invalid argument
Line: 37
Char: 2
Code:0

on file: scripts.js. When I added it inline, it changed to:

Error: Invalid argument
Line: 37
Char: 2
Code:0

file: index.php

The problem? Apparently, IE cannot process a window name if it has a space in it. Ridiculous!

Published by Adam S

75 Replies to “Internet Explorer Sucks”

  2. Thank god I found your post here. I just had the same situation: hour of trying to find the same stupid mistake. IE realy sucks!!!

  3. Thank fsck for that – I just wasted 3 hours of my life trying to debug why some users cant see a window popup, and some users can.

    Google of “invalid argument code 0 msie” lead me here .. being the most linked to article on the net about this stupid problem. Thank you sooooo much for publishing an answer to this problem – It would have taken me days to uncover the answer myself by accident.

    Some people dont understand why I hate MS so much – I dont use ANY MS products at all in anything I do, and yet every single week for the last 12 years, something totally stupid like this comes up which causes me to waste my time chasing wild geese and rainbows looking for a solution.

    Every Single Time I work on something – there is ALWAYS some peice of MS crapware on someone else’s machine interfering with my work.

    If I have a ‘problem’ with Apache, or MySQL, or PHP, or Gentoo, or gcc, or bash, or Ubuntu, or Mozilla or … ANYTHING sensible, there is always good reference material online, and there is always a good reason explaining the cause of the problem. As soon as you find a solution, you are left with a comfortable feeling that the issue is resolved, and you are back in control.

    But as soon as a ‘problem’ with an MS product rears its ugly head – there is nothing on MS’s website that is of any use, and it ALWAYS turns out that the cause of the problem is just pure slackness on MS’s part. As soon as you find a solution, because the cause of the problems never make sense, you are left with an uneasy feeling that it is only a matter of time before something equally bizarre pops up with another MS ‘feature’ in another one of their prodicts. In fact, there are no SOLUTIONS to any of these sorts of bugs – just work arounds.

    That is what I hate about MS more than anything – its all just pure slackness and unpredictable pollution without any good reason, and it takes hours to find a work around that half-works.

    And I HATE IT. It costs me time, money, and reputation every time one of THEIR stupid illogical mistakes interferes with what I am currently working on.

    I already have the “No, I wont fix your Windows system” coffee cup, but maybe its time I dropped support for any customer using any MS product at all (even an MS branded mouse)

    grrrrrrr

    1. Thank you. I am happy that somebody else wrote about MS how I feel about them for years. I love your “pure slackness on MS’s part” term.

  4. Thank you for this entry. I was having a bad day trying to find why my code worked on Firefox but not MSIE. A google search brought me to this site and now– problem solved (mine not MSIE’s).

  6. You all bitch and complain about Microsoft products… why don’t you try and come up with your own software then… you all think you’re so smart.

    1. They are right. It’s got nothing to do with your line ‘if you think your so smart etc.’ Microsoft are paid so people should expect the product to work properly. I bet your one of these persons who complain if and when things go wrong for you.

  7. You all bitch and complain about Microsoft products… why don’t you try and come up with your own software then… you all think you’re so smart.

    Hey dummy:

    Operating System – Linux (many flavors), OS X, FreeBSD
    Browser: Firefox, Opera, Konquerer, Safari
    Database: MySQL, PostgreSQL, DB2, Oracle
    Productivity: OpenOffice, iWork
    File Format: OpenDocument
    File System: ZFS, JFS, XFS
    Programming: PHP, Ruby on Rails, Python

    Nice try at trolling.

  8. http://thetoptenme.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/10-reasons-why-not-to-use-msie-internet-explorer/

    Am I a Internet Explorer hater; No, but close. Consider This: If you have ever worked on a design or a particular cool feature for your web application and all went well people loved it and even your boss loved it. All to find out the ##*@@ IE, dosen’t work the way you expect. Knowing myself well I wouldn’t even bother. However we live in a strange world where inspite of the best avilable browsers being free, we still use IE. I am a big fan of Firefox, yes Opera and Safari are also really great.

    Now comes the tricky part I can respect anyone using anyone of the listed browser above but, Why still people use IE. It just escapes me. I request all of you to please download you fav browser and use it instead of the Stupid, Unresponsive, Technical Blunder, and Arrogant IE.

  9. I’m having the same error, to bad I’m using a cut and paste java for my drop down menu (which sounds like may be the problem)and I don’t know java and so I’m a little stuck on this one. lol
    Should I learn js? Yes
    Was I planning on it? NO
    Will I end up learning more than I wanted to? Yes
    Do I hate IE? YES!

  11. A letter to microsoft customer support after fighting with the error mentioned above simply for appending a class name with jQuery. The only thing I could do was rant, because I couldn’t do anything else. This all just flowed right off of my fingers to the keyboard with virtually no effort at all. I hate MS. I really do. And they don’t care. Enjoy, sorry if parts are too offensive. It made me laugh after I read it back..

    Hi,
    I’m a web developer, and I want to thank you for wasting my time. The only thing I can do right now is rant, because you make my job miserable. Fuck you, and your stupid non-working piece of worthless shit fuck browser called internet explorer. Do you even realize how big of a piece of shit it is? Ballmer do you realize that you are a fat bald sweaty piece of monkey shit? Really, I don’t mean to take a stab at you personally, but seriously, I hope you feel great about the way people feel about your company’s products every day. There are countless websites on why people should not use IE, why web developers, who are doing really cutting edge and amazing things for really grand user experiences on the web, really fucking hate IE and Microsoft’s lazy ass approach to fixing bugs. Invalid argument, Invalid argumentd, invalid fucking argument after another, and no decent debugging tools out there, I hate you.

    Why don’t you use Apple’s webkit, or talk to Mozilla, and team up with a company that makes a browser that supports standards, and actually fucking works. Not tomorrow, or ten years from now, that shit should have been done yesterday. Jump on it right now, make some damn phone calls you lazy shits! But please, if you do, make the news of such a decision public on a Friday, because everyone in my line of work will celebrate thier asses off when we catch wind of the decision. Probably more celebratory alchohol among programmers in my industry will be consumed at that moment than any other time in history, and shit isn’t going to get done for a few days. So instead of contributing our unproductivity, say, during the middle of the week (because we already are quite unproductive due to your shitty debugging vague bullshit), please make such an announcement public on a Friday.

    Or here is an idea, why don’t you just let IE die, focus on making your other shitty products, and leave the web alone. Too many people use the internet, it is always bad business to piss off the internet, take a look at Scientology. Here are some examples of why you, and IE, suck: the font smoothing looks like shit, it dosen’t have a correct box model, it plainly, to put it gently, is complete shit, smelly waste bowel excrement. If I went out and bought a car, and the paint was all rough looking and shitty compared to every other vehicle, I would think, that it was a pretty shitty decision to buy that car, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. This is what many many people are doing with IE. If that is the goal, then why not just kill it? You are essentially killing it anyway. Shit decomposes, that’s what it does best, actually. I mean, when my dog shits in my back yard, I give it a week, and its gone. Pretty quick.

    If I have to debug another fucking stupid invalid argument error in IE. I’m going to lose my fucking mind. Fuck you. Fuck you, you fucking worthless waste of time IE developer fucks. I fucking hate you. I hate your company, we would all be better off without your worthless fucking products. Piss off and suck a dick.

    1. "Developer" thank YOU for using Microsoft products – after all, you are- we love you – HAHAHAHAH. Sorry you couldn't get a job with us either (yes, a survey recently concluded that 99% of people that lash out against MS is because they were turned down from an interview) – the right choice.

  13. I fucking hate internet explorer. WTF is urlmon.dll and wheer is it? It says it's gone right, so i try to fucking find a repacement. BUT! I can't download ANYTHING because the windows security zone settings or smoe shit are all crazy and shit. And my intenet exporer is fucking gone so I can't change the security settings. So here I am downloading files by using torrent sites to find the torrent adress to download them using utorrent, only to find out that I have to use fucking 7zip WTF IS 7ZIP!??? To unzip the fuckers.

    FUCK.

  15. If the incumbent CEO of Microsoft really wants to improve the entity’s image, it can start with a complete revamp of personnel running ‘INTERNET EXPLOITER’, for indeed, I.E.,in this computer, is an ‘exploiter’ of the system. It has no place in ‘civil society’ . You do right in using ‘aliases’ in your managerial positions. This is a great contributory factor ‘for your own safety’, believe you me!

  16. I am also having a problem

    Error: Invalid argument
    Line: 2
    Char: 1333
    Code:0

    I do not know how to figure out

  17. Had the same error message recently. In the same time Firefoz and Safari were cool about the file.
    I hate IE. Always steals my time cause it needs a ‘special approach’, especially in css.
    Thats why i call my stylesheets that I have to create separately for IE – stupid-ie.css :))

  18. Thanks for the laughs guys and gals, I thought I was alone and stupid, I am a 57 year old dude that fucking hate IE and its constant pop up “cannot run this script, fuck I don’t even kopw what scrip is. It is good to see that people that know their shit are alson pissed off at this piece of shit company, So in the spirit of trying to keep my sanity, FUCK YOU IE, FUCK YOU MICROSOFT and thank you OPERA and Mozzella
    PS after this pc and or its os crashes and we know it will, it”s good by pc and microsoft and hello MAC
    Rick

  21. what is with IE????? everything goes to a lank page and its impossible to get rid of, i have mozilla as my default but some things i click on goes to IE, can i delete IE peminately ?

  22. Glad I read this, much appreciated. Saved me many hours of IE troubleshooting. I develop my sites in FireFox and dread the final site test in IE. I have nightmares about IE debug errors.

  23. Pingback: Internet explorer sucks « Ta1no’s Weblog

  24. F* CK IE! Every f ing time I finish a webapp I have to start the f over because shit wont work in there. And yes IE is the only browser sh*t wont work in. I hate this shit. Spending hours trying to fix this and that creating custom css with if IE if IE. FCK – IE!!! If IE was a dude I'd fing shoot em in the face!!!
    FUCK U IE!!! Grrrrrrr!!!!

  29. Lot of idiots complaining here about IE and glorifying Firefox. At least IE doesn't suppress Freedom of Speech by blocking content that is not conducive to slobbering all over this current administration. Also IE doesn't have Pop-Ups every time you open the site either.

  30. You can always tell when you have a troll because they start using technology as a weak from for their even weaker political whining.

  31. Please don't post pro-Microsoft bull shit here. They suck and you know it. Your stupid comment is as stupid as telling someone to build their own car 'cause they don't like Fords. Get a clue, loser!

  32. More like F**************CK! Really… WTF! IE sucks big time! Who is the shit-for-brains that came up with IE?

  33. I totally agree with you, man! What a piece of crap they have come up with. I mean, get a clue! Shit! Shit! Shit!

  34. What in Heaven's name are you talking about. Freedom of speech? What does that have to do with royally screwing up technology? The other browsers mentioned here do not have pop-ups every time a site is opened either! At least make an argument free of logical fallacies.

  35. Man, good that I found this page… IE really sucks man.. I always run into trouble in my javascripts when I test in IE.
    And have they fixed this yet?

  37. I'm 18 and haven't tried to get a job with them. So FUCK YOU. Microsoft is a giant piece of shit. Everything they do sucks. I stick to Mozilla over IE because even at this age I can see that it is fucking worthless. Fuck I even spent more money to go buy a ps3 over a 360 so I didn't have to deal with microsoft. Thank God I did or else I would have to put up with their shit to fix a red ring of death. So go suck your daddy's dick.

  38. I was getting this exact same problem with IE8. Searched through the net and found the solution about removing spaces from the name. Trouble was that there weren’t any spaces in the name. Turns out that it can’t handle hyphens either. Alpha characters only? That makes for great readability

  39. ah, priceless, some serious cathartic laughter brought about by Developer in post #11.

    Yes, IE in all its flavors does blow serious chunks, although IE8 is a miraculous improvement and is still horrendous compared to Safari and Firefox among others.

    One thing that has helped my development experience is setting doc type to XHTML and not HTML. That one freaking X actually gets my websites looking almost exactly the same in all major browsers including IE8 (IE6 & 7, not so great but screw it, only so many hours in a day, clients generally hate IE as well). Now no more need for * html hacks to get IE to play nice.

    Still some hassles with jQuery (wondrous gift from above) and IE8, but manageable due to jQ enourmous support community.

    Thanks for wasting my time indeed, probably well over 1,000 hours spent hacking IE quirks over the years…

  40. Cocksucking bullshit fucking IE – what a waste of goddamn time. You best stay in hiding Bill Gates.
    I’d pull your tonque out your asshole if I got my hands on you, you dumbass motherfucking piece of nerd shit.

  41. Internet explorer is the worst part of Microsoft products. I only reason to use – check IE bugs on websites. However Windows7 is ok for me atm.

  42. There have been more man-hours spent cursing Microsoft than all the man-hours using it. It is the biggest piece of shit out there. I will never buy another Microsoft operating system, and Internet Explorer is completely pathetic. There is never any help. Try fixing not allowing downloading of imbedded images in Outlook, for instance. Microsoft sticks its finger up its ass when you try to find help.. After standing on my head an spitting nickels, I found a workaround. Right now I’m trying to find a way to increase font size when I’m forced to use IE for a website. I stopped at XP, run Debian and Ubuntu with Firefox on everything and will never use any Apple product (having done business with them starting in 1984 and realizing what bastards they are – worse than Microsoft).

  43. I found this site one evening as I was clenching my teeth and cursing IE and Microsoft in general. I typed “Fuck you internet explorer” into my dogpile search and schazam!!!! There it was. Oh, and by the way, FUCK YOU INTERNET EXPLORER!!!!! What a worthless piece of shit. 95% aggravating, 4.95% stupid, and possibly, just maybe, 0.05% semi-okay. After all these years of trying to get their shit right they are worse off than when they 1st started. Why, oh why don’t they just fuck off and die? I can’t figure it out……..can you?

  44. Thanks so much. That really saved me from hourts of debugging. If only everyone would use a decent browser like Firefox

  45. IE is sooo strict on its own version of javascript rendering, I would try using JLint, JQuery and ECMAscript compliance or you will be fighting with cross-browser complience for years to come.

    Without a code example this page is useless.

  46. Hello guys,

    This time, i spend alot of time again with just a simple site only because of IE (version 8 right now and IE9 to come but has also (other) bugs), other browsers just work fine, no problems at all. It is not only the no support of W3C stuff but also the lack of debugging possibiities. Something happen but no error or just a line number that not correspond with the real line error and also not refreshing the js file i’m working on…. Too much to mention to go wrong.

    I hate IE as soon Microsoft hit the market to compete other browser(s) (because they ony want to tackle competition) and it all has to do about market share,not aboutquality I develop websites since 2000, i spend alot of time/hours to make it work or workarounds for all the stupid bugs inside IE. It’s time to stop this bullshit.

    The sad thing is that you cannot claim the extra hours that IE costs at your customers. It is no need to say that it is enough at 2010, i like to see that everbody that spend alot of extra hours write down the amount of extra hours you spend on IE (and the costs per hour). We can create an website about this and try claim the lost hours by Microsoft. Because they are the ones that want to compete at any price. This is our price. Bill and Belinda have a foundation, to do good things. Do something back for the lost hours and the ‘success’ of Microsoft by ‘supporting’ their ‘platform’.

    This is a nutshell and not the whole strong story. I have to go to sleep right now. If you want to contact me, contact the administrator.

    Greetz,
    Erwinus

  47. Okay, so everyone says to ‘remove’ the space in the window name, well I do not see this so called ‘space’ everyone is referring to and I still can not get a pop up window in IE! Here if the code that I have …

    Where the f*ck do you see a space in ‘windowname’?

  48. OMG it won’t post my code …

    window.open(url,windowname,"resizable=no,toolbar=no,scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,status=no,directories=no,width="+w+",height="+h+",left="+x+",top="+y+"");

  49. I’m not a beginner in Javascript but I’m also not a professional in it either. It works just perfectly fine in Firefox but not IE. Let’s see if this code copy and pastes now ..

    This part is in my header of my site …

    function myPopup(url,windowname,w,h,x,y)

    window.open(url,windowname,”resizable=no,toolbar=no,scrollbars=yes,menubar=no,status=no,directories=no,width=”+w+”,height=”+h+”,left=”+x+”,top=”+y+””);

    and I close my header.

    Than in my body tags I have this ..

    a href=”javascript:myPopup(‘url”,’650′,’700′,’350′,’1000’)”>See our 1st Quarter Promotion /a

    Closed body tag.

    1. Well, it’s obvious. You have a function that needs 6 arguments and you’re only passing 5. You completely omitted the window name in your code.

      Try this:


      a href="javascript:myPopup('url','Popup','650','700','350','1000')">See our 1st Quarter Promotion /a

      1. See that’s what I thought too, I have removed it from being called for in the header and as well as in the body but I still get an error in IE

        So I just reentered it in and now IE works just fine. Sorry for being an idiot, thanks for the help Adam! 🙂

  50. FUCK U IE9, and fuck u windows, i am a poor computer illiterate bum, so i use firefox now, since i don’t/can’t use any other OS apart from god damn windows. A company so large with so much resource concentrating on making windows and ie, presents us with crap every couple years, am i the idiot? or those programmers sitting in microsoft office? i just had to type “fuck u ie9” into google, hoping one day, with enough clicks and cross-ref, those programmers (or their boss) would actually make something that won’t freeze/crash/blue screen/shut down/restart at its own will.

    FUCK U IE9

    1. Actually, while I agree that it’s super lame that IE9 requires Vista, keep in mind that the biggest feature of IE9 is accelerated graphics (including fonts!), which render natively on the GPU. This requires a feature that doesn’t exist on XP. If nothing else, at least understand WHY Microsoft imposed this limitation. IE9 is at least a halfway decent browser and deserves recognition, even if it’s still a long way from competitive.

  51. I hate Internet Explorer!
    IE9 has “Hardware Accelleration”! I think MS secretly talks to Graphic-card-Manufacturers in order to sue them to implement that in hardware what microsoft isn’t able to implement in software (while other developer can). These Assheads!
    Microsoft is a big Blow!

  52. I just wanted to say fuck you Internet Explorer.

    FUCK YOU, Internet Explorer!!

    There, now I feel better.

  53. Love the ie bashing and agree totally with it, however microsoft did so many things right like windows and office and basic networking a 12 year old can figure out. Its not the best since everyone who sets up there own box on linux will tell you their setup is the best but thats a prefrenece. I found this after finding that the new ie8 adds site headers to a tags and passes them to jquery so now 10 of my sites are fucked as the ajax in receieving http://kldjfkld/dkjfdkls.index.php/#someParam instead of #someParam and it took me half an hour to figure it out. I fucking hate this worthless browser.
    Any way i just dont understand how IE cant make a browser even half way compatible with the other browsers out there?
    Safari is even now restricting flash content but standard markup is fine.
    Its like the guy who invents the first vehicle uses three wheels then all the compeptitors make one with four and they go faster and are more stable how is it that microsoft doesnt follow along and make a browser that is at least using the same compliant standards as every other browser out there?
    It is like they are neglecting the most used program they provide in the operating system. Font sizes dont match in px % or em. Borders are counted into object size scroll bars are added into objects with specific width counts randomly.
    Every web developer out there absolutley hates IE and none of us want to build anything for this system that has been upgraded 3 times in two years with absolutley no regard for making developers job easier.
    Who is in charge of this department he should be fired and they should just take the free the standrads everyone else is using and apply it to their fucking piece of shit browser that never improved even slighlty from IE 6 except for basic appearence.
    What are these guys making 100k per year to sit in their offices and say hmm why dont we copy the style and tabs from mozzila but the actual reason people like mozzila no we dont need to do that. Is it a money thing can we setup a fund for these assholes to make the most widely used browser at least use the standard rendering concepts as all other browsers.
    I would rather sit here and bitch for twenty minuets than rewrite everything again and again for this stupid fucking browser that cant apply a font size in a div to all elements in the div isnt that what cascading style means that it applys to inner elements fuck how do you miss these trivial basic concepts for 5years in a row wake up and just follow the standard conventions already before all web developers just stop allowing IE from accessing their sites.

  54. And when i finally decide to download ie 9, two hours later…OH BY THE WAY CANT FINISH. “YOU HAVE THE LATEST VERSION”…FUCKING TIME SUCKING ILLUMINATI DEMONS!!! GO TO HELL WHERE GOD PREPAIRED A PLACE FOR YOU.YOU SATANIC SHIT SNIFFERS!!!YOUR REWARD IS COMING IN YOUR LIFETIME . GOD BLESS.

  55. Oh, by the way, Itnertnut Exploiter, I just happen to be the lead guitarist & lead singer front man for a awsomely popular band in all of ark. and surrounding states. We perform for huge crowded events. I will be making copies of these post’s and throwing them out to our audiences . Protesting the reasons to stay away from these ILLUMINATI BAPHOMET SPERM SNORTERS……..whew !…INTERBUTT EXPLOADER SMELLS LIKE STRAIGHT UP ASS!!!

  57. Unfortunatly people will always continue to use IE and so microsoft just dont bother.. how about the open in new window bug on windows 7… still no real fix for it (aside from work arounds that other people have figured out on the net.) Why should microsoft bother to improve it when there are plenty of free alternatives about… if everyone just stopped buying their shit then they might get up off their asses… Until then wait for windows 8 and the cockups that will follow -.-

  59. I’m fixing IE issues recently for my product. And for some issue, I wrote the perfect solution as “Cherish your life, keep away from IE, PLEASE!”.

  62. Your slow as hell fuck Internet Explorer, you get stuck a lot..how the Fuck do I get off here, your shit is fucking me up…If your ass was in punching range, I beat the fuck out off you

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