bug 517 - Internet Explorer Zoom doesn't always work

Issue: #517
Affects: IE7, IE8, IE9, IE10 Preview

Ever since Internet Explorer supported zooming page content in the browser there have been issues with the Zoom feature.

In IE7 it was rough and it was particularly bad scaling form elements unequally not to mention framesets were a disaster.  In IE8 things got much better and the scaling was much more predictable.

However there are 4 issues with Zoom in IE to this day that drive developers and users alike bonkers.

1.) The default keyboard shortcut of [CTRL] + [0], [CTRL] + [-], and [CTRL] + [+]  to adjust the zoom do NOT work if you use the numberpad keys.

2.) The zoom isn't a graceful increase when zooming in 5% at a time like in other browsers.  IE's first "step" is a whopping 125%!  As developers this isn't always easy to accommodate gracefully... many users just want to bump up the zoom a "notch" and 125% is overkill.

3.) The performance of a web page drastically decreases when zoomed in to the point that on heavy web pages the site becomes almost unusable - Most corporate web applications do not support use of Zoom in IE as a result.

4.) Zoom isn't applied to everything! Oh sure, you probably knew that radio buttons don't scale but did you know that if you have any dialog windows created using Microsoft's proprietary showModalDialog() or showModelessDialog() methods that the content inside them completely ignores the users request to have the content zoomed.

Does your site/application support the Zoom feature in IE? Have you seen how it behaves compared to other browsers?

Note: The Modal, and Modeless dialogs in Internet Explorer have been deprecated in IE10 Metro Mode thus if you were still using them for some strange reason it is time to update your code!

 

Known Workarounds: None.

Related Issues: None.
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bug 234 - showModalDialog Array returnValue now fails

Issue: #234
Affects: IE6, IE7, IE8

We haven't discovered if this bug is exclusive to VBScript or if it affects JavaScript too (but feel free to update us in the comments if you know).

If you downloaded the latest IE Cumulative Security Update for October 2009 security patch, which "fixed" Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 974455 then you may have noticed that the showModalDialog documentation indicates that the window.returnValue accepts an Array.

However after updating KB974455, there was an undocumented change that now Array return values are no longer allowed.

So what can you do if you depend on this non-standard dialog? Well, the workaround is ugly but there hasn't been confirmation from Microsoft that this bug was introduced - nor that a fix is on the way.

Known Workarounds: One. Use something other than an Array and handle the return value accordingly.

Example Workaround Code:

On the Popup window:

<script type="text/vbscript">
  //was
  window.returnValue = arrayValue;

  //now use
  arrString = Join(arrayValue, ";");
  window.returnValue = arrString;
</script>

On the Calling window (e.g. Opener):

<script type="text/vbscript">
  //was
  retArray = window.showModalDialog( ... );

  //now use
  tempRetArray = window.showModalDialog( ... );
  retArray = Split(tempRetArray, ";");
</script>

Related Issues: None.



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