> I figured it out. I was wiping out the form by setting the innerHTML > property of a parent div before calling form.serialize. Interestingly > though, this worked in previous versions of IE and still does in > virtually every other browser, if you have a reference to the form > before wiping it out.
If you have a reference to the form's DOM element prior to setting `innerHTML`, it should remain valid. I found it so surprising that IE8 would get this wrong that (with apologies) I had to test it for myself. But I can easily replicate your result on IE6 - IE9: http://jsbin.com/elihi5 It only happens if you remove the form by setting `innerHTML` on its parent, though. If you remove it via DOM `removeChild`, it works correctly: http://jsbin.com/elihi5/2 So it's down to how IE handles setting `innerHTML`. Apparently, doing so destroys the parent/child relationship of the elements therein, as we can see here: http://jsbin.com/elihi5/5 If I use `innerHTML` to clear it, although my reference to the form remains valid, the form no longer has any children. If I already have a reference to one of its children, my reference remains valid, but the form still loses that child. Very surprising behavior. I suppose since `innerHTML` is a Microsoft invention and hasn't until recently[1] been subject to any standardization, calling this "wrong" (as I did above) is harsh. But really, really surprising. Thanks for letting us know about it! [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/apis-in-html-documents.html#dom-innerhtml -- T.J. Crowder Independent Software Engineer tj / crowder software / com www / crowder software / com On Jun 16, 12:07 am, Don <donlope...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Jun 15, 2:25 am, "T.J. Crowder" <t...@crowdersoftware.com> wrote: > > > Hi, > > > On Jun 14, 5:40 pm, Don <donlope...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > form.serialize in IE8 is returning a blank string, even though there > > > are elements. Should this be working in IE8? > > > That seems really unlikely. What does your form look like? And in > > particular, do the form fields have `name` values (rather than `id`s)? > > I figured it out. I was wiping out the form by setting the innerHTML > property of a parent div before calling form.serialize. Interestingly > though, this worked in previous versions of IE and still does in > virtually every other browser, if you have a reference to the form > before wiping it out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Prototype & script.aculo.us" group. To post to this group, send email to prototype-scriptaculous@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to prototype-scriptaculous+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/prototype-scriptaculous?hl=en.
