Why Javascript only works after opening developer tools in IE once?

IE9 Bug - Javascript only works after opening developer tools once.

Our site offers free pdf downloads to users, and it has a simple "enter password to download" function. However, it doesn't work at all in Internet Explorer.

You can see for yourself at this example: http://www.makeuseof.com/pages/how-to-use-virtual-box

The download pass is "makeuseof". In any other browser, it works fine. In IE, the buttons both just do nothing.

The most curious thing I've found is that if you open and close the developers toolbar with F12, it all suddenly starts to work.

We've tried compatibility mode and such, nothing makes a difference. Please, help me figure this out!

How do I make this work in Internet Explorer?

ask:

It sounds like you might have some debugging code in your javascript.

The experience you're describing is typical of code which contain

console.log()

or any of the other

console

functionality.

The

console

object is only activated when the Dev Toolbar is opened. Prior to that, calling the console object will result in it being reported as

undefined

. After the toolbar has been opened, the console will exist (even if the toolbar is subsequently closed), so your console calls will then work.

There are a few solutions to this:

The most obvious one is to go through your code removing references to

console

. You shouldn't be leaving stuff like that in production code anyway.

If you want to keep the console references, you could wrap them in an

if()

statement, or some other conditional which checks whether the console object exists before trying to call it.

Link:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7742781/why-javascript-only-works-after-opening-developer-tools-in-ie-once