Firebug error causing code to fail in Sitecore when using IE8 to view the Content Editor

Question

Hi,

I have a Sitecore 6 CMS with a custom data provider to create child items on the fly based on items added to a field in the parent item. This was working okay (about a week ago was the last time I was working on this project), but now I am getting errors in the web client which are originating in the FirebugLite html and JS files. Basically, I click on a content item, the FirebugLite js fails, and then my code in my custom data provider fails to run.

I would have thought any FirebugLite scripts would be disabled or ignored when running under IE8 (isn't FirebugLite a Firefox addin?)

When I remove the FirebugLite folder from ..\sitecore\shell\Controls\Lib\ my code runs fine and I don't get the clientside errors. I'm not really sure what my question is. I guess it is should FirebugLite affect IE8? What am I missing out on if I remove FirebugLite from the Sitecore directory tree?

I'm running WindowsXP SP3, VS2008. The errors I get are the following:

Webpage error details

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR    1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Timestamp: Fri, 14 May 2010 06:42:04 UTC


Message: Invalid argument.
Line: 301
Char: 9
Code: 0
URI: http://xxxxxxx.com.au/sitecore/shell/controls/lib/FirebugLite/firebug.js


Message: Object doesn't support this property or method
Line: 21
Char: 1
Code: 0
URI:   http://xxxxxxxx.com.au/sitecore/shell/controls/lib/FirebugLite/firebug.html


Message: Invalid argument.
Line: 301
Char: 9
Code: 0
URI: http://xxxxxxxx.com.au/sitecore/shell/controls/lib/FirebugLite/firebug.js


Message: Object doesn't support this property or method
Line: 21
Char: 1
Code: 0
URI: http://xxxxxxxx.com.au/sitecore/shell/controls/lib/FirebugLite/firebug.html

Cheers,

James.

Answer 1

Firebug is a Firefox plugin. As far as I'm aware FirebugLite is the Javascript-only version, and as such should run in any browser. If you're getting problems and using IE8 then you won't lose much removing it as IE8's developer toolbar is pretty decent for manipulating the DOM and css, as well as debugging and profiling Javascript. That being said, Firefox would always be my first choice during development.

Answer 2

We have run into this same issue with IE 8. One of our developers found that it was solved by disabling the option for "Enable Protected Mode" within IE.