Question

So, I’m trying to find an answer to why this problem is happening; I’ve fixed the problem, but I want to know why it happened.

TL;DR

Google-provided conversion tracking code that injected an iframe using document.write suddenly caused the page to cease to execute in all versions of Internet Explorer, but was remedied by injecting the same iframe using a non-document.write method.

The Story:

Doubleclick is an advertising network that provides a JavaScript snippet to track conversions from ads.

The snippet they give looks like this:

<SCRIPT language="JavaScript">
var axel = Math.random()+"";
var a = axel * 10000000000000;
document.write('<IFRAME SRC="https://fls.doubleclick.net/activityi;src=143;type=donat01;cat=indir4;ord=1;num='+ a + '?" WIDTH=10 HEIGHT=10 FRAMEBORDER=0></IFRAME>');
</SCRIPT>
<NOSCRIPT>
<IFRAME SRC="https://fls.doubleclick.net/activityi;src=143;type=donat01;cat=indir4;ord=1;num=1?"
WIDTH=1 HEIGHT=1 FRAMEBORDER=0></IFRAME>
</NOSCRIPT>

Now, I know that, for all sorts of reasons, document.write is hazardous and should be avoided. But, Google is giving me this code, so, I figured I could trust it.

It suddenly started breaking all of our pages for all users using Internet Explorer. As in, the page would stop rendering entirely once it hit the document.write. This was crazy: One of the largest third party advertisers on the internet had given me JavaScript that had LITERALLY broken my purchase pages for 25% of my traffic!

As triage, I quickly substituted in the same code using the injection technique found in Google Analytics:

var iframe = document.createElement('iframe');
iframe.src = //the URL;
iframe.width = 0;
iframe.height = 0;
iframe.frameborder = 0;
var ref = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
ref.parentNode.insertBefore(iframe, ref);

This resolved the problem, without actually explaining:

Why does a nearly empty iframe, injected using document.write, break Internet Explorer, but this method above doesn’t?

Answer 1

I’ve solved the problem; it turns out that it had nothing to do with the contents of the <iframe>.

It turns out the page is served by a framework that began using a backend DOM parser that, for reasons likely related to the presence of </ within a <script> tag within the document.write, completely removes the </iframe> closing tag from the generated page, even though it preserves it in the backend. (It’s probably trying to enforce ETAGO rules).

The reason I was able to reproduce it was because I was copying the generated document.write code, not the original code, and never noticed the missing </iframe>. (And my "functioning" document.write code didn’t have the stripped out </iframe> tag, leading me to believe that the problem was the contents of the iframe.)

As a result, browsers parsed an unclosed <iframe> tag on the page, which Internet Explorer didn’t know how to handle, and died part way through the parsing of the iframe (I’m still not totally sure why).