IE ‘operation aborted’ error

One of the most underrated practice for a web developer is to constantly check the web page on all the browsers and make sure everything is rendering as you expect it to. It becomes more important for dynamic content pages such as blogs where new scripts, widgets can irk a specific browser. More often it is with IE and the problem is widespread since many web developers prefer Macs (and really very few people have IE on macs), Mozillas and Safaris; often ignoring IE. However, the bottom line is to do frequent browser checks to catch the error before a reader does.

One of the common IE bugs that creeps in is the ‘Internet Explorer cannot open the website …..; Operation aborted!’ error. Lately, it had surfaced in my blog because of an embedded CNN video that used javascript inside body tag.

The reason for this error is that javascript interferes with the loading of page by trying to load elements before the page has been fully parsed. The common solutions are to move the script outside the body etc. However, in blogs where the page is dynamically generated and I don’t want to put in too fancy hacks, the easier work around is to do a conditional browser check for IE and load the script only if it is a non-IE browser else display a simple link.

For eg.

<![if !IE]>
<script .. /> /* let the script load if non IE browser */
<![endif]>
<!--[if IE]> /* only IE will parse this and display a normal link */
see this <a href="">link</a>
<![endif]-->

For more information on browser checks, follow this.

This will, of course, work only if you are fine with not embedding the culprit video in IE. I hate having to tweak my pages for IE but then, I hate seeing the pages break too and would rather put in that extra effort for ensuring wider browser compatibility because we are far from witnessing IE getting extinct anytime soon. The javascript issue can be caused by videos, google maps etc. So, keep an eye when you publish a new post with js content enabled.

P.S. – A good tool to check how your design renders on various browsers without having all the browsers installed is Browser-Shots. It has a multitude of browsers to select from and should do a quick job for you.