ear-fung.us I’m a programmer. I’m also pro-grammar.

Another IE Bug. Why Microsoft, Why?

I installed the WordPress plug-in 'Democracy' today and got a call from a user telling me that he couldn't add an option to the poll. After checking the user, I found out that there was a problem with Internet Explorer. Big surprise, right?

I learned that when creating a radio button html item using Javascript's `createElement()` function, unless very carefully crafted, Internet Explorer will refuse to select the radio button. The following Javascript code fails miserably in IE 6 & 7:

var rdo = document.createElement('input');
rdo.type = 'radio';
rdo.id = 'someUniqueID';
rdo.name = 'myRadio';
rdo.value = 1;
myDocumentsBody.appendChild(rdo);

The way around it? Simply create the entire element using innerHTML.

document.getElementById("my_id").innerHTML('<input type="radio" id="someUniqueID" name="myRadio" value="1" />');

This works in all major browsers and IE will actually be able to select the radio button.

I freaking HATE IE. This is yet another example of how Microsoft has failed the web developer community by not providing consistent standards for us to adhere to.

More detailed info and some code samples here.