Question

I developed a .htm document with an in-built script for javascript to run a program. In google chrome, the program works fine, but I got a beta test complaint that it didn’t work on firefox 14.01 or opera. On testing with firefox 14.01, I can confirm it doesn’t work (I assumed opera to be the same). I cannot insist the audience upgrade their browsers, as this is supposed to be widely compatible.

Doing a little tracing of the issue, I installed Firebug, which, on clicking the Javascript button to generate a coordinate the first time, it worked (clearly showing the function is defined and exists), but the second time, Firebug complained that:

"ReferenceError: GenerateCoord is not defined".

This wouldn’t be so ironic if it only did this after generating an (encrypted) coordinate (thus calling GenerateCoord that is supposedly ‘undefined’).

If one looks in the code, one can clearly see that the function GenerateCoord is clearly defined before it is called. I would say firefox has an ‘onclick’ issue, but then it begs the question why did it work the first time I clicked it (calling GenerateCoord via ‘onclick’) but not the second?

Reloading the file allows the button to work the first time, and the first time only. I am baffled as to how firefox can call a function one time that it then says is undefined the next. Am I missing something here?

Javascript and HTML code can be viewed here:

http://pastebin.com/4qykTfEW

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How do I solve the problem, and is there an easier solution than re-writing the code to avoid onclick (that seems to work in certain circumstances but not others)?

Answer 1

The problem is that using document.write overwrites the entire HTML page, thus inadvertently removing the GenerateCoord script. I’d suggest appending the link to the document (in ShowTarget) rather than attempting to re-write it.

For example, have a container element where the link should be:

<div id="links_container"></div>

Then to append the links, use:

document.getElementById('links_container').innerHTML = Link;