IE7 Crashing on some machines, errors in Debug bar, but don't see 'showstopper'

Question

I've recently been made aware that my site is crashing in IE7. I tested it on a bunch of machines myself, but of course it always runs perfectly. My brother just showed me IE7 on his computer, and it definitely crashes.

I've got 'debugbar' running, and it shows some errors in the HTMLCheck, and is warning that fb:login-button is not recognized (but of course it is allowed).

I run javascript check and it says

Script Error:
//----------------
Line: 1
Character: 6
Code: 0
Error Message: Syntax error

I can't actually see any script error myself.

The link is http://HearWhere.com

If somebody could help me figure out why this is failing on 15% or so of IE users, I'd be very very greatful. Pete

Answer 1

There's no Javascript errors (according to FireBug), but a large number of errors in the CSS for that page, any one of which could be antagonising IE7.

Answer 2

If you are crashing, the JS code is not a likely cause. You need to look at isolating the specific OS, IE version number, patch level, and external dependencies (versions of flash, etc).

Answer 3

IE8 has a really nice javascript debugger, but it doesn't crash in IE8 for me. Previously I used Microsoft Script Editor for debuggin in IE 6 & 7. For some strange reason it's bundled with Microsoft Office! It's a bit hassle to setup, but it works.

http://www.jonathanboutelle.com/mt/archives/2006/01/howto_debug_jav.html

Answer 4

Definitely does crash IE7 on a virtual machine I have. It's worth doing a bit of an audit for a start - for example, you're including and calling the Google Analytics JS twice, which is probably screwing up your stats if nothing else.

I've had crashes related to jQuery in IE7 before, all of which I could put down to large jQuery loops. Have a look through your code and comment parts where you are looping over the results of a jQuery select that could have a large number of results, or times when you are inserting a large number of elements into the DOM.