Problem related to https that only exists in IE8 (not any other browsers)

Question

I have a website that have some javascript code to dynamically load in the top navigation generated from .ashx file on the ASP.net 2.0 server.

It works fine in all browsers if the webpage doesn't use https. However, if the webpage uses https as the protocol, the top navigation works fine in all browsers (IE6, IE7, FF, Google Chrome, Safari) except IE8. The top navigation disappears in IE8.

Does anyone know what causes this problem and how to solve it?

Answer 1

I have found what causes the problem.

The top navigation is loaded in from a non-ssl .ashx file,
e.g. http://www.example.com/ex1/example.ashx.

All other browsers work fine but IE8 requires https to be used when loading the .ashx file (due to the security issue?),
i.e. https://www.example.com/ex1/example.ashx