Error 239 while using Find

Today I tried to do a Find on an Amazon webpage containing information about
a Toshiba netbook and got the following:

An error has occurred in this dialog.
Error: 239
Object doesn't support this property or method.

I went to the next webpage--customer comments about that netbook--and I
could use Find there.

I Googled the error code and found the following from someone who had also
encountered this error code: "it's linked to iframes when using Internet
Explore 6/7. The error 239 happens when you try to search (ctrl+F) through a
page hosting an iframe."

Is there anything I can do to be able to use Find on the problem page?

Thank you!

Jo-Anne

Jo-Anne wrote:

> Today I tried to do a Find on an Amazon webpage containing information about
> a Toshiba netbook and got the following:
>
> An error has occurred in this dialog.
> Error: 239
> Object doesn't support this property or method.

Got a URL to the problematic web page? A web page at Amazon.com about some
Toshiba netbook isn't specific enough to know what web page generated the
problem.

"VanguardLH" <> wrote in message
news:hf40uq$hme$...
> Jo-Anne wrote:
>
>> Today I tried to do a Find on an Amazon webpage containing information
>> about
>> a Toshiba netbook and got the following:
>>
>> An error has occurred in this dialog.
>> Error: 239
>> Object doesn't support this property or method.
>
> Got a URL to the problematic web page? A web page at Amazon.com about
> some
> Toshiba netbook isn't specific enough to know what web page generated the
> problem.

In case it's important, I'm using IE7, not IE8. The easiest way to get to
the URL at Amazon is to search on the ASIN, which is B002BDUAU4 . Then click
on the netbook. The page that opens is the one I'm having trouble with. I
did finally do the search by copying and pasting the text from that page
into an email and searching the email instead.

Jo-Anne

Jo-Anne wrote:

> "VanguardLH" <> wrote in message
> news:hf40uq$hme$...
>> Jo-Anne wrote:
>>
>>> Today I tried to do a Find on an Amazon webpage containing information
>>> about
>>> a Toshiba netbook and got the following:
>>>
>>> An error has occurred in this dialog.
>>> Error: 239
>>> Object doesn't support this property or method.
>>
>> Got a URL to the problematic web page? A web page at Amazon.com about
>> some
>> Toshiba netbook isn't specific enough to know what web page generated the
>> problem.
>
> In case it's important, I'm using IE7, not IE8. The easiest way to get to
> the URL at Amazon is to search on the ASIN, which is B002BDUAU4 . Then click
> on the netbook. The page that opens is the one I'm having trouble with. I
> did finally do the search by copying and pasting the text from that page
> into an email and searching the email instead.
>
> Jo-Anne

In IE8, no problem when doing a Find (using "product" as an example) on that
web page, which is:

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-NB205-...9728302&sr=8-1
(short URL: http://tinyurl.com/y8f2hnq)

I have IE7 still in Windows XP Pro SP-3 in a virtual machine. No add-ons
have been installed into IE7 (because this VM is for a clean install of the
OS plus all the OS updates but no application installs). The Windows XP
install actually includes an old version of the Adobe Reader AX control
which I had to get rid of using Adobe's uninstaller since it was causing
crashes in IE7. When I did a Find using IE7 then I got the 239 error
message.

What I also noticed is that if you right-click anywhere in this web page and
select "View Source" that Notepad opens with an empty document. Somehow
Amazon is preventing IE7 from getting the content of the web page that IE7
just rendered. I'm wondering if Amazon is building the page dynamically.
That is, instead of sending HTML code for the web page, it has a Javascript
function run on your end end that decide what content to retrieve and show
you, or uses a server-side script to dynamically compose the web page.

Because this is a clean setup of Windows XP in the VM, I don't have any
diagnostic tools over there. I downloaded and installed Fiddler2. I've
only peeked at this tool a couple times so I'm a complete noob with it.
When I browse to the web page for the auction at Amazone, an elephant-sized
crapload of images get downloaded. Some Doubleclick tracking is done. Ad
content is retrieved. Some tracking crap from ATDMT. More images. I can't
see where there is download of text and which you could search on. I
could've missed it in what retrievals were made to paint that web page but I
didn't see anything get retrieved that looked like a candidate for a text
source and on stuff that you could search. I selected the Inspectors tool
in Fiddler and then selected a few of what looked like possible candidates
for text content (but didn't bother looking at the ad content getting
delivered). I'd select the Text inspector but it couldn't find any for the
content sources for the web page that I picked.

It's beyond me. I can't see sources for that web page that would contain
text. I see some .js (Javascript) being called from other files so maybe
they're dynamically building the page content using scripting. I think
you'll have to head to an HTML programming newsgroup to get the pros to
figure out why IE7 thinks there is no text in the source for that web page
(but maybe for IE7 the site isn't delivering any).

I've had various problems trying to use the Developer Tools feature in IE8.
When I loaded a blank instance of IE8, hit F12 to load the Developer Tools,
and then entered the URL for this web page, IE8 just hung. I'd have to
install Fiddler2 to see what content gets delivered when that web browser is
connected to that web page to see if the same content is delivered (which
means IE8 is better at intercepting the dynamic content to search it) or if
different content gets delivered). Too late and it's been a long hard day
so I'm going to sleep in a short time. Again, the folks in an HTML
programming group or someone familiar with Fiddler2 to analyze a site's
content would probably provide better help.

"VanguardLH" <> wrote in message
news:hf4sjt$p5v$...
> Jo-Anne wrote:
>
>> "VanguardLH" <> wrote in message
>> news:hf40uq$hme$...
>>> Jo-Anne wrote:
>>>
>>>> Today I tried to do a Find on an Amazon webpage containing information
>>>> about
>>>> a Toshiba netbook and got the following:
>>>>
>>>> An error has occurred in this dialog.
>>>> Error: 239
>>>> Object doesn't support this property or method.
>>>
>>> Got a URL to the problematic web page? A web page at Amazon.com about
>>> some
>>> Toshiba netbook isn't specific enough to know what web page generated
>>> the
>>> problem.
>>
>> In case it's important, I'm using IE7, not IE8. The easiest way to get to
>> the URL at Amazon is to search on the ASIN, which is B002BDUAU4 . Then
>> click
>> on the netbook. The page that opens is the one I'm having trouble with. I
>> did finally do the search by copying and pasting the text from that page
>> into an email and searching the email instead.
>>
>> Jo-Anne
>
> In IE8, no problem when doing a Find (using "product" as an example) on
> that
> web page, which is:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-NB205-...9728302&sr=8-1
> (short URL: http://tinyurl.com/y8f2hnq)
>
> I have IE7 still in Windows XP Pro SP-3 in a virtual machine. No add-ons
> have been installed into IE7 (because this VM is for a clean install of
> the
> OS plus all the OS updates but no application installs). The Windows XP
> install actually includes an old version of the Adobe Reader AX control
> which I had to get rid of using Adobe's uninstaller since it was causing
> crashes in IE7. When I did a Find using IE7 then I got the 239 error
> message.
>
> What I also noticed is that if you right-click anywhere in this web page
> and
> select "View Source" that Notepad opens with an empty document. Somehow
> Amazon is preventing IE7 from getting the content of the web page that IE7
> just rendered. I'm wondering if Amazon is building the page dynamically.
> That is, instead of sending HTML code for the web page, it has a
> Javascript
> function run on your end end that decide what content to retrieve and show
> you, or uses a server-side script to dynamically compose the web page.
>
> Because this is a clean setup of Windows XP in the VM, I don't have any
> diagnostic tools over there. I downloaded and installed Fiddler2. I've
> only peeked at this tool a couple times so I'm a complete noob with it.
> When I browse to the web page for the auction at Amazone, an
> elephant-sized
> crapload of images get downloaded. Some Doubleclick tracking is done. Ad
> content is retrieved. Some tracking crap from ATDMT. More images. I
> can't
> see where there is download of text and which you could search on. I
> could've missed it in what retrievals were made to paint that web page but
> I
> didn't see anything get retrieved that looked like a candidate for a text
> source and on stuff that you could search. I selected the Inspectors tool
> in Fiddler and then selected a few of what looked like possible candidates
> for text content (but didn't bother looking at the ad content getting
> delivered). I'd select the Text inspector but it couldn't find any for
> the
> content sources for the web page that I picked.
>
> It's beyond me. I can't see sources for that web page that would contain
> text. I see some .js (Javascript) being called from other files so maybe
> they're dynamically building the page content using scripting. I think
> you'll have to head to an HTML programming newsgroup to get the pros to
> figure out why IE7 thinks there is no text in the source for that web page
> (but maybe for IE7 the site isn't delivering any).
>
> I've had various problems trying to use the Developer Tools feature in
> IE8.
> When I loaded a blank instance of IE8, hit F12 to load the Developer
> Tools,
> and then entered the URL for this web page, IE8 just hung. I'd have to
> install Fiddler2 to see what content gets delivered when that web browser
> is
> connected to that web page to see if the same content is delivered (which
> means IE8 is better at intercepting the dynamic content to search it) or
> if
> different content gets delivered). Too late and it's been a long hard day
> so I'm going to sleep in a short time. Again, the folks in an HTML
> programming group or someone familiar with Fiddler2 to analyze a site's
> content would probably provide better help.

Thank you, Vanguard, for all your work trying to figure this one out! I'm
tempted to report it to the Amazon webmaster (if there is such a person).
Eventually, I guess I'll have to download IE8.

Jo-Anne

"VanguardLH" <> wrote in message
news:hf4sjt$p5v$...
> Jo-Anne wrote:
>
>> "VanguardLH" <> wrote in message
>> news:hf40uq$hme$...
>>> Jo-Anne wrote:
>>>
>>>> Today I tried to do a Find on an Amazon webpage containing information
>>>> about
>>>> a Toshiba netbook and got the following:
>>>>
>>>> An error has occurred in this dialog.
>>>> Error: 239
>>>> Object doesn't support this property or method.
>>>
>>> Got a URL to the problematic web page? A web page at Amazon.com about
>>> some
>>> Toshiba netbook isn't specific enough to know what web page generated
>>> the
>>> problem.
>>
>> In case it's important, I'm using IE7, not IE8. The easiest way to get to
>> the URL at Amazon is to search on the ASIN, which is B002BDUAU4 . Then
>> click
>> on the netbook. The page that opens is the one I'm having trouble with. I
>> did finally do the search by copying and pasting the text from that page
>> into an email and searching the email instead.
>>
>> Jo-Anne
>
> In IE8, no problem when doing a Find (using "product" as an example) on
> that
> web page, which is:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-NB205-...9728302&sr=8-1
> (short URL: http://tinyurl.com/y8f2hnq)
>
> I have IE7 still in Windows XP Pro SP-3 in a virtual machine. No add-ons
> have been installed into IE7 (because this VM is for a clean install of
> the
> OS plus all the OS updates but no application installs). The Windows XP
> install actually includes an old version of the Adobe Reader AX control
> which I had to get rid of using Adobe's uninstaller since it was causing
> crashes in IE7. When I did a Find using IE7 then I got the 239 error
> message.
>
> What I also noticed is that if you right-click anywhere in this web page
> and
> select "View Source" that Notepad opens with an empty document.

It's not empty. Amazon put loads of line breaks, and lines consisting of
just spaces, all over the place. When I do View Source the notepad/editor
window looks blank, but you need to scroll down ...

The html for the above page starts on the 73rd line of the return content.
The entire page is almost 18000 lines in the version I've just looked at,
most of the first 4500 lines is CSS. The W3C Validator on the HTML alone
throws up over 1000 errors, although most of those are XHTML type self
closing elements, and the use of & instead of &amp; for ampersands,
especially in URLs.

What's likely happening with IE7 is that some javascript within that first
page is interfering with the javascript used by the Find feature; which to
me also suggests that it's vulnerable to script injection or modification of
some kind that could be a potential security risk.

--
Dan

Dan wrote:

> VanguardLH wrote ...
>
>> What I also noticed is that if you right-click anywhere in this web page
>> and select "View Source" that Notepad opens with an empty document.
>
> It's not empty. Amazon put loads of line breaks, and lines consisting of
> just spaces, all over the place. When I do View Source the notepad/editor
> window looks blank, but you need to scroll down ...

It was late and my eyelids were creeping down over my eyeballs. I didn't
notice there was a scrollbar in Notepad to indicate there was more document
to see. Today it is taking such a ridiculously long time to load the
content into Notepad when I choose View Source that I gave up. Got more
fun things to do.

Oops, just when I was about to click send on this post, Notepad finally got
done loading what it got sent by IE8. 18,665 lines just for the content
whose source I elected to view (I didn't pick all elements on the page).
Amazon's web designers are nuts. That's far too much code and delays
download time. No wonder retrieving their web pages is slow. A lot of it
is whitespace yet a lot of it is just glitz fluff.

At http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834114666 for the
same product, Newegg needs only 1369 lines of HTML to show that product.
But then Newegg leaves the marketing glitz to the vendor by providing a link
to the vendor's product page (if the vendor permits a direct link) rather
than duplicating it at Newegg.

"Dan" <> wrote in message
news:708AF4F2-7B2C-4C69-8E30-...
>
> "VanguardLH" <> wrote in message
> news:hf4sjt$p5v$...
>> Jo-Anne wrote:
>>
>>> "VanguardLH" <> wrote in message
>>> news:hf40uq$hme$...
>>>> Jo-Anne wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Today I tried to do a Find on an Amazon webpage containing information
>>>>> about
>>>>> a Toshiba netbook and got the following:
>>>>>
>>>>> An error has occurred in this dialog.
>>>>> Error: 239
>>>>> Object doesn't support this property or method.
>>>>
>>>> Got a URL to the problematic web page? A web page at Amazon.com about
>>>> some
>>>> Toshiba netbook isn't specific enough to know what web page generated
>>>> the
>>>> problem.
>>>
>>> In case it's important, I'm using IE7, not IE8. The easiest way to get
>>> to
>>> the URL at Amazon is to search on the ASIN, which is B002BDUAU4 . Then
>>> click
>>> on the netbook. The page that opens is the one I'm having trouble with.
>>> I
>>> did finally do the search by copying and pasting the text from that page
>>> into an email and searching the email instead.
>>>
>>> Jo-Anne
>>
>> In IE8, no problem when doing a Find (using "product" as an example) on
>> that
>> web page, which is:
>>
>> http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-NB205-...9728302&sr=8-1
>> (short URL: http://tinyurl.com/y8f2hnq)
>>
>> I have IE7 still in Windows XP Pro SP-3 in a virtual machine. No add-ons
>> have been installed into IE7 (because this VM is for a clean install of
>> the
>> OS plus all the OS updates but no application installs). The Windows XP
>> install actually includes an old version of the Adobe Reader AX control
>> which I had to get rid of using Adobe's uninstaller since it was causing
>> crashes in IE7. When I did a Find using IE7 then I got the 239 error
>> message.
>>
>> What I also noticed is that if you right-click anywhere in this web page
>> and
>> select "View Source" that Notepad opens with an empty document.
>
> It's not empty. Amazon put loads of line breaks, and lines consisting of
> just spaces, all over the place. When I do View Source the notepad/editor
> window looks blank, but you need to scroll down ...
>
> The html for the above page starts on the 73rd line of the return content.
> The entire page is almost 18000 lines in the version I've just looked at,
> most of the first 4500 lines is CSS. The W3C Validator on the HTML alone
> throws up over 1000 errors, although most of those are XHTML type self
> closing elements, and the use of & instead of &amp; for ampersands,
> especially in URLs.
>
> What's likely happening with IE7 is that some javascript within that first
> page is interfering with the javascript used by the Find feature; which to
> me also suggests that it's vulnerable to script injection or modification
> of some kind that could be a potential security risk.
>
> --
> Dan
Hi, Dan,

I contacted Amazon about the error message and was told they'd work on it.
Amusingly, the contact there said the following to me in an email--after
suggesting that I disable Add-ons to see if that solved the problem: "If the
error is a scripting issue, try triggering it with IE8 Beta 2 and then use
the new developer tools to help troubleshoot the issue. If the error has not
been removed after 2 days, please call our customer service for online
trouble shooting." I'm tempted to email back that I'm a customer, not a
programmer--but if I do that, I'll mention your suggestion and Vanguard's.

Jo-Anne

"VanguardLH" <> wrote in message
news:hf6gbq$ck4$...
> Dan wrote:
>
>> VanguardLH wrote ...
>>
>>> What I also noticed is that if you right-click anywhere in this web page
>>> and select "View Source" that Notepad opens with an empty document.
>>
>> It's not empty. Amazon put loads of line breaks, and lines consisting of
>> just spaces, all over the place. When I do View Source the notepad/editor
>> window looks blank, but you need to scroll down ...
>
> It was late and my eyelids were creeping down over my eyeballs. I didn't
> notice there was a scrollbar in Notepad to indicate there was more
> document
> to see. Today it is taking such a ridiculously long time to load the
> content into Notepad when I choose View Source that I gave up. Got more
> fun things to do.
>
> Oops, just when I was about to click send on this post, Notepad finally
> got
> done loading what it got sent by IE8. 18,665 lines just for the content
> whose source I elected to view (I didn't pick all elements on the page).
> Amazon's web designers are nuts. That's far too much code and delays
> download time. No wonder retrieving their web pages is slow. A lot of it
> is whitespace yet a lot of it is just glitz fluff.
>
> At http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834114666 for the
> same product, Newegg needs only 1369 lines of HTML to show that product.
> But then Newegg leaves the marketing glitz to the vendor by providing a
> link
> to the vendor's product page (if the vendor permits a direct link) rather
> than duplicating it at Newegg.

Thank you, Vanguard! See my response to Dan for what Amazon suggested and
what I was thinking of doing.

Jo-Anne

"Jo-Anne" <Jo-AnneATnowhere.com> wrote in message
news:...
> "Dan" <> wrote in message
> news:708AF4F2-7B2C-4C69-8E30-...
>>
>> "VanguardLH" <> wrote in message
>> news:hf4sjt$p5v$...
>>> Jo-Anne wrote:
>>>
>>>> "VanguardLH" <> wrote in message
>>>> news:hf40uq$hme$...
>>>>> Jo-Anne wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Today I tried to do a Find on an Amazon webpage containing
>>>>>> information
>>>>>> about
>>>>>> a Toshiba netbook and got the following:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> An error has occurred in this dialog.
>>>>>> Error: 239
>>>>>> Object doesn't support this property or method.
>>>>>
>>>>> Got a URL to the problematic web page? A web page at Amazon.com about
>>>>> some
>>>>> Toshiba netbook isn't specific enough to know what web page generated
>>>>> the
>>>>> problem.
>>>>
>>>> In case it's important, I'm using IE7, not IE8. The easiest way to get
>>>> to
>>>> the URL at Amazon is to search on the ASIN, which is B002BDUAU4 . Then
>>>> click
>>>> on the netbook. The page that opens is the one I'm having trouble with.
>>>> I
>>>> did finally do the search by copying and pasting the text from that
>>>> page
>>>> into an email and searching the email instead.
>>>>
>>>> Jo-Anne
>>>
>>> In IE8, no problem when doing a Find (using "product" as an example) on
>>> that
>>> web page, which is:
>>>
>>> http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-NB205-...9728302&sr=8-1
>>> (short URL: http://tinyurl.com/y8f2hnq)
>>>
>>> I have IE7 still in Windows XP Pro SP-3 in a virtual machine. No
>>> add-ons
>>> have been installed into IE7 (because this VM is for a clean install of
>>> the
>>> OS plus all the OS updates but no application installs). The Windows XP
>>> install actually includes an old version of the Adobe Reader AX control
>>> which I had to get rid of using Adobe's uninstaller since it was causing
>>> crashes in IE7. When I did a Find using IE7 then I got the 239 error
>>> message.
>>>
>>> What I also noticed is that if you right-click anywhere in this web page
>>> and
>>> select "View Source" that Notepad opens with an empty document.
>>
>> It's not empty. Amazon put loads of line breaks, and lines consisting of
>> just spaces, all over the place. When I do View Source the notepad/editor
>> window looks blank, but you need to scroll down ...
>>
>> The html for the above page starts on the 73rd line of the return
>> content. The entire page is almost 18000 lines in the version I've just
>> looked at, most of the first 4500 lines is CSS. The W3C Validator on the
>> HTML alone throws up over 1000 errors, although most of those are XHTML
>> type self closing elements, and the use of & instead of &amp; for
>> ampersands, especially in URLs.
>>
>> What's likely happening with IE7 is that some javascript within that
>> first page is interfering with the javascript used by the Find feature;
>> which to me also suggests that it's vulnerable to script injection or
>> modification of some kind that could be a potential security risk.
>>
>> --
>> Dan
> Hi, Dan,
>
> I contacted Amazon about the error message and was told they'd work on it.
> Amusingly, the contact there said the following to me in an email--after
> suggesting that I disable Add-ons to see if that solved the problem: "If
> the error is a scripting issue, try triggering it with IE8 Beta 2 and then
> use the new developer tools to help troubleshoot the issue. If the error
> has not been removed after 2 days, please call our customer service for
> online trouble shooting." I'm tempted to email back that I'm a customer,
> not a programmer--but if I do that, I'll mention your suggestion and
> Vanguard's.
>

My initial suggestion to Amazon would be to learn to create well formed,
reasonably condensed HTML with external references to stylesheets rather
than including thousands of lines of CSS in every single product page. While
I occassionally have little choice but to order from Amazon because they are
the only site listing a product I'm after, I do tend to steer clear and look
elsewhere for products.

--
Dan