IE8 has console error

[sdaikichi]

I running multi-browser Javascript tests which catch console messages.
Only IE 8(and older) has Console Error:"'prototype' is null or not an object"

(Screenshots with BrowserStack Live)

Probably it comes from JSON3
bestiejs/json3#86

[jzaefferer]

@flore77 this might've been introduced by #159, can you check that?

[flore77]

Yes, I will check.

[flore77]

@sdaikichi from where have you installed browserstack-runner? npm? or here from github?

@jzaefferer if he got it from npm, then it is definitely not from #159, because they didn't make a new release after merging.

[sdaikichi]

@flore77 I installed from npm.

[vedharish]

The console error is from browserstack-util.js and is present in the already released version. Issue is with IE 8 and lower.

[jzaefferer]

@tr4n2uil could you look into that? Seems like a recent regression

[vedharish]

@sdaikichi Can you please confirm the test framework that you are using? If you are using qunit, you need to include qunit.js in your html files. Also qunit >= 2.0.0 does not support IE8

[sdaikichi]

@vedharish Im using mocha.

[jzaefferer]

Its not documented anywhere and accordingly hard to tell, but I think Mocha supports IE8: https://github.com/mochajs/mocha/blob/master/karma.conf.js#L91

[tr4n2uil]

@sdaikichi Are you still facing this issue ?

[sdaikichi]

@tr4n2uil yes.

[oliverfriedmann]

The issue seems to be that Webpack injects an empty exports = {} as a "root" object into JSON3, but JSON3 sort-of requires the global window object as a root on IE <= 8.

[mohitmun]

As mentioned by @oliverfriedmann, JSON3 requires the global window object as a root, but here issue is not with webpack, but with following condition in json3

var freeGlobal = typeof global == "object" && global;
if (freeGlobal && (freeGlobal["global"] === freeGlobal || freeGlobal["window"] === freeGlobal)) {
  root = freeGlobal;
}

apart from IE8, other browsers evaluates window.window === window as true, but IE8 evaluates to false. it doesn't enter if condition and window is not assigned to root.
Checkout this comment.

[carhartl]

I‘m running out of ideas.. is there any way to workaround this? We aimed to but can‘t run automated tests in IE 6-8 due to this.

The question whether we should still be testing in these browsers is another one :)