IEContentLoaded (last updated 05/10/2007)

An alternative for DOMContentLoaded on Internet Explorer

This is an Internet Explorer only method. It does not produce the expected results on other browsers.
It is meant to be used as an IE alternative in other fine scripts trying to fix the window onload problem.
It is based on a hack (no doubt about that), but I hope it is an improvement over previous IE hacks.

Several tests has showed that the only other (documented) method covering all the aspects of this complex problem is the original Microsoft HTC method as described by Dean Edwards in An Alternative Solution.

However an inline solution is always preferred, possibly XHTML compatible, with no document.write and without requiring external files.

The solution I show here uses the "doScroll()" method in a try/catch polling loop. This triggers when no errors are returned by "doScroll().

You can quickly download the small iecontentloaded.js script or just have a look at it.

The Microsoft online documentation About Element Behaviors tell us something about this:

Some TEST CASES showing the IEContentLoaded method

• An HTML test case (no images)
• A PHP test case (no images, with delays)
• An HTML test case (with images)
• A PHP test case (with images, with delays)

The objective of these tests is to compare the detection reliability of this method.

In this specific case we are interested in determining when all the nodes in the
requested page have been loaded and parsed in the DOM and available to scripts.

The fact that images exists or not in the page shouldn't affect this test.

The test case executes these steps, in sequence, at different times:

1. INLINE STYLE is applied and the BODY background color is set to "lime"
2. Ending BODY SCRIPT is executed and the background color is set to "red"
3. IEContentLoaded function is fired and the background color is set to "green"

The page should have a "green" background color after being loaded completely.
If that is not the case then something went wrong in my script or in your browser.

The IEContentLoaded source code

/*
 *
 * IEContentLoaded.js
 *
 * Author: Diego Perini (diego.perini at gmail.com) NWBOX S.r.l.
 * Summary: DOMContentLoaded emulation for IE browsers
 * Updated: 05/10/2007
 * License: GPL/CC
 * Version: TBD
 *
 */

// @w	window reference
// @fn	function reference
function IEContentLoaded (w, fn) {
	var d = w.document, done = false,
	// only fire once
	init = function () {
		if (!done) {
			done = true;
			fn();
		}
	};
	// polling for no errors
	(function () {
		try {
			// throws errors until after ondocumentready
			d.documentElement.doScroll('left');
		} catch (e) {
			setTimeout(arguments.callee, 50);
			return;
		}
		// no errors, fire
		init();
	})();
	// trying to always fire before onload
	d.onreadystatechange = function() {
		if (d.readyState == 'complete') {
			d.onreadystatechange = null;
			init();
		}
	};
}

Fine script for the window.onload problem

This filler ensure exceeding the default 4Kb output caching of Apache.

This filler ensure exceeding the default 4Kb output caching of Apache.

This filler ensure exceeding the default 4Kb output caching of Apache.

This filler ensure exceeding the default 4Kb output caching of Apache.