Question

I’m trying to get a jquery IE placeholder fix to work. It works fine in IE9 but in IE8 I keep getting an alert…

‘attr(…)’ is null or not an object

This is the code I am using. Am I doing something wrong?

<!--[if lte IE 9 ]>
    <script>
        // IE Placeholder Fix
        $(function() {
            if ($('input[placeholder]').attr('placeholder').val() != '') {
                var ph = $('input[placeholder]').attr('placeholder');
                $('input[placeholder]').blur();
                if ($('input[placeholder]').attr('value').val() == 0) {
                    $('input[placeholder]').attr('value', ph);
                    $('input[placeholder]').css('color','#999999');
                };
                $('input[placeholder]').click(
                    function() {
                        $(this).css('color','#000000');
                        if ($(this).attr('value') == ph) {
                            $(this).attr('value','');
                    }
                });
            }
        });
    </script>
<![endif]--> 

UPDATE:

Using the comments below I came up with…

<!--[if lte IE 9 ]>
    <script>
        // IE Placeholder Fix
        $(function() {
            if ($('input[placeholder]').length != 0) {
                var ph = $('input[placeholder]').attr('placeholder');
                $('input[placeholder]').blur();
                if ($('input[placeholder]').attr('value') == '') {
                    $('input[placeholder]').attr('value', ph);
                    $('input[placeholder]').css('color','#999999');
                };
                $('input[placeholder]').click(
                    function() {
                        $(this).css('color','#000000');
                        if ($(this).attr('value') == ph) {
                            $(this).attr('value','');
                    }
                });
            }
        });
    </script>
<![endif]--> 

Answer 1

Calling a method or property on a null object will result in errors of the sort you are experiencing. If you are not sure if an object is defined, test this before referring to any children.