Javascript vs. IE8 - Expected identifier, string or number

Question

No, it's not an extra comma.

Here is the snip that is giving me the problem.

$(document).ready(function(){   
    $("div#slider").easySlider({
        auto: false,
        continuous: true,
        nextId: "nextBtn",
        prevId: "prevBtn"
    });

    $("div#slider-banner").easySlider({
        auto: true,
        continuous: true,
        controlsShow: false
    });
        // <---------------------------------- Line 14
    $("div#slider-photos").easySlider({
        auto: true,
        continuous: true,
        controlsShow: false
    });

    $("#marquee").marquee({
        scrollSpeed: 25,
        pauseSpeed: 2000,
        showSpeed: 850

    }); 
});

ERROR DETAILS

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Tablet PC 2.0; OfficeLiveConnector.1.3; OfficeLivePatch.0.0)
Timestamp: Wed, 6 Apr 2011 15:20:42 UTC


Message: Expected identifier, string or number
Line: 14
Char: 5
Code: 0

This is happening on random IE8 installs, any ideas?

Solution 1

Try putting all your object properties in (double)quotes, like this:

$("div#slider").easySlider({
    'auto': false,
    'continuous': true,
    'nextId': "nextBtn",
    'prevId': "prevBtn"
});

Solution 2

In 2015. if you still care about IE8 compatibility (more or less), my issue with this error was only manifesting on a live server, but didn't happen on localhost (go figure). And, it triggered IE8 error in such a way that it went down into IE7 Compatibility View, which also sucks just the same as Quirks Mode.

In any case, the problem could not be solved by any of the above tips, and the issue was a trailing comma after listing some parameters/options.

For Example:

$(document).ready(function(){
    $('#selector').func({
        rules: {
            parameter1: {
                option1: true,
                option2: 1,
                option3: 5
            }
        }, // <- this trailing comma is fatal to IE8
    });
});

Solution 3

I had similar issue with knockout class attr binding. It happened that the class attribute had to be enclosed in quotes like 'class'.

Comments

[Blender]

Did you beat it repeatedly and yell obscenities? That usually works when I debug IE. Now, back to business, have you tried removing those chunks of code? Knowing IE and it's clarity, it could be talking about line 14 of the plugin...

[Mayo]

That was my thought - char 5 coincides with the property identifiers. I don't think the syntax is wrong for object literals - but maybe one of those properties has a special meaning in a few of these IE8 installs? Or maybe there is a namespace issue that only shows up in IE8 (possibly only those with/without compatibility mode)?

[Eric W.]

I had a similar issue with accessing an object's property via dot notation within a nested function. Switching to brackets solved the issue within IE8.

[user56reinstatemonica8]

I think this might have something to do with property keys matching keywords? I had this problem with an object property named default and I only needed to put 'default' in quotes. I think here IE is freaking out at the object property name auto.

[AsGoodAsItGets]

The OP started by explicitly stating "No, it's not an extra comma". This is the thing to check first in IE :)