jQuery.animate({left: 0}) error in IE8

Question

In IE8, the line $liElement.animate({left:0},500); breaks the page with an "Object doesn't support this property or method" error. $liElement is the jQuery object I get from $('#mydiv li').eq(0);

$liElement.animate({},500); does not cause an error.

I am using jQuery 1.5.1. How can I fix this?

@Diodeus, no - it doesn't work for any values. Neither does `right` — smartcaveman, Apr 18 '11 at 20:13
@Frederic Hamidi, No, but it is nested inside an absolutely positioned `div` — smartcaveman, Apr 19 '11 at 14:53

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 19 '11 at 20:22

0

wrap the call in a try catch:

try {
    // animate  
} catch (e) {
    // handle error
}

edited Apr 19 '11 at 20:22

Frédéric Hamidi

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answered Apr 18 '11 at 20:13

ChrisThompson

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[Rule #43](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1234343/why-are-empty-catch-blocks-a-bad-idea): Empty `catch` blocks are ***evil***. – Frédéric Hamidi Apr 18 '11 at 20:17
unless @Chris intended to place something in the catch block, like a console.log(e) or debugger statement... – Dan Davies Brackett Apr 18 '11 at 20:24
@Dan D, you might be right, and I'll definitely cancel the downvote if @Chris does so. But `wrap the call in a try catch` does not give me much hope. – Frédéric Hamidi Apr 18 '11 at 20:27
1

@Frederic, Am i supposed to know what the person who posted the question wants to do on failure? That wasn't even the question. – ChrisThompson Apr 18 '11 at 21:18
@Chris, well, `animate()` should not fail like this on IE8. Swallowing the exception silently with an empty `catch` block, as you're suggesting, will not help solving that problem. – Frédéric Hamidi Apr 18 '11 at 21:35
1

@Frederic, i said use a try catch. i'm not writing the code. Nor did the question say how an error should be handled. But this does address the question. If you know better, why don't you enlighten us. – ChrisThompson Apr 18 '11 at 21:46
@Chris @Frederic the answer changed; when originally written, the //handle error comment was absent. That caused Frederic to assume that the point of the answer was to swallow the error silently and start this comment war. It's since changed; I still think it's the wrong solution, because it doesn't address the fundamental source of the error, but Mr. Hamidi's reason for downvoting no longer applies. – Dan Davies Brackett Apr 19 '11 at 15:52
@Dan D, downvote is now lifted (I had to edit @Chris's answer to be allowed to do that). Apologies to both of you for the comment war, it wasn't my intent. – Frédéric Hamidi Apr 19 '11 at 20:25

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 19 '11 at 15:56

To get to the source of this, you'll have to run this code under a debugger and find out (1) which object it's complaining about (2) which property or method it's complaining about. Then, you can work backward to see whose assumption is incorrect. Perhaps you could post a jsfiddle that has a minimal test case?

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 19 '11 at 16:06

0

You need to make the element either absolutely or relatively positioned. Otherwise a value for left will be ignored.

answered Apr 19 '11 at 16:06

Rich Bradshaw

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I tried prefixing the call with both `$liElement.css('position','relative')` and `liElement.css('position','absolute')`. Neither fixed the error – smartcaveman Apr 19 '11 at 18:20

jQuery.animate({left: 0}) error in IE8

3 Answers3