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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-15T21:55:54+00:00

For some reason the following code does not work as expected when in IE

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For some reason the following code does not work as expected when in IE 8, as noted in the comment. I’m trying to add a “writeSpecial” method to the document object, and this works fine the first time that the method is called, but whenever this is called a subsequent time, it becomes undefined.

However, this only happens in IE when I use the onload event. There seems to be no difference between an inline body onload and window.attachEvent(‘onload’, main);. If I call main() directly from the script block, it works fine. Again, this is only in IE.

Would anyone happen to know why this is?

Thanks!

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Test</title>
    <script type="text/javascript">

      document.writeSpecial = function(str)
      {      
        this.write(str + " [specialfied]");
      }          

      function main()
      {           
        alert(document.writeSpecial);
        document.writeSpecial('test 1');
        alert(document.writeSpecial);    //document.writeSpecial is undefined here in IE, works in firefox...why?
        document.writeSpecial('test 2');        
      }    
    </script>
  </head>
  <body onload="main()">
  </body>
</html>
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I did some testing and as near as I can figure in IE document.write resets the document object. So here is a revised version that will work. If you didn’t use the write function I don’t think you would have had any trouble. Maybe someone else can elaborate on why IE does this. 

    window.onload=function(){
function foo(str){
  document.write(str + " [specialfied]");
  document.writeSpecial=foo;
}
document.writeSpecial=foo;
main();
function main(){
  document.writeSpecial('test 1');
  document.writeSpecial('test 2');        
}};
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