My IE doesn't support "document.getElementById()"!

Question

My IE is IE 6. It's pretty old, but I have to use it.

I just found a strange problem, it doesn't support "document.getElementById()"!

See my test file: test.html

<a id="aaa">xxx</a>
<script>
aaa = document.getElementById("aaa");
alert(aaa);
</script>

When I open this file by IE, there shows an ERROR dialog:

line: 3
char: 1
error: object doesn't support the attribute or method
code: 0
URL: file://D:/test.html

Do I made some mistakes? It's so strange ~

Answer 1

Its because the anchor element is set up (in IE6) as a global variable with name aaa. And then you are trying to use another variable with same name.

If you change it to...

<a id="aaa">xxx</a>
<script>
bbb = document.getElementById("aaa");
alert(bbb);
</script>

it should work.

See http://verens.com/2005/03/18/getelementbyid-bug-in-ie6/

Answer 2

Change the variable name so that its not the same as the element id.