Search widget doesn't appear IE<9

kevinpeno · 2012-05-25T16:02:45.000Z

I’m trying to figure out why the search widget does not appear in MSIE8 (and below) across our websites. The only thing I can find is the error listed below.

SCRIPT5007: Unable to get value of the property ‘currentStyle’: object is null or undefined
widget.js, line 12 character 18458

Test page available here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46815086

This page includes nothing but the twitter embed…so it makes little sense why it wouldn’t appear.

Triogap · 2012-05-29T11:58:34.000Z

You have to place the script containing your widget definition inside the body.

kevinpeno · 2012-05-29T16:53:01.000Z

Hi, and thanks for taking a look! I’ve tried both ways and settled on putting it in the head since this page is dedicated only to the widget itself. Even if it is pasted into the body IE8 and below fail to render the widget with the error I specified above.

kevinpeno · 2012-06-11T20:24:27.000Z

For anyone interested in the future. I was able to isolate the problem down to the fact that the title property for the search options was set to empty. This is because the client didn’t like the styling of title and was using the description property as the title instead. I added a space to the title property and not only did the widget start to work, the title still never appeared.

TL;DR

The title property for the search widget must have at least an empty space in it or the widget will crash in IE less than 9.

niall · 2016-02-06T23:17:57.062Z

niall · 2016-02-06T23:19:23.375Z