Problem with MSIE 5.0 and Javascript onMouseOver

MSIE 5.0 (Microsoft Internet Explorer) appears to have changed the operation of the AREA tag of a MAP page, and Javascript 'onMouseOver' tags no longer have the desired affect.

This is bad news for our website where we have a clickable map of courts in England & Wales. Moving the mouse over a point on the map should display the town name in the browser status bar. This previously worked fine with MSIE 4.0 and Netscape 3.04 + 4.5, but MSIE 5.0 instead displays the full url of the associated data page as given in the HREF attribute.

By changing the HTML code we can get the page to run with MSIE 5.0, but then it won't work with Netscape. As a result we have had to provide two map pages - a new one for MSIE 5.0 and the old one for all other browsers.

The code which works fine with MSIE 4.0, Netscape 3.04 + 4.5 is:

<map name="uk">
<area shape="circle"
  coords="124,317,3"
  HREF="data/court1.htm"
  onMouseOver="window.status='Aberystwyth' ;return true">
  etc

The only code we have found to work correctly with MSIE 5.0 involves replacing the 'HREF' line with:

onClick="window.open('data/court1.htm','frame2')" - but then it won't work with Netscape!

Is this a bug, our finger trouble, or part of Microsoft's plans for world domination?

Any suggestions, please email SPIG

Last updated - 2 September 2002


SPIG Home Page