We recently had an issue in development with Internet Explorer's Operation Aborted error. It halts the loading of the page nicely [not] to the horror of developer's everywhere but since most development and debugging is done on Firefox courtesy of the exceptionally useful firebug tool it often gets missed or caught at the last moment.
The Internet Explorer javascript compiler/runtime is not always accurate in its error throwing. In fact it nearly never is, and the actual error thrown is an emergent issue relating to a deeper fault. In our case the Operation Aborted was a related error that Internet Explorer had issues with. But that is the purpose of quality control and taking the development code through strict levels of testing before publishing into production.
Sitemeter seems to have skipped that step. Websites that embedded their javascript appeared one morning on IE browsers with the Operation Aborted error. Via ReadWriteWeb:
A bug found in both the javascript and HTML widget made thousands of sites using Sitemeter inaccessible earlier today including popular blogs such as PerezHilton.com, Gizmodo, Valleywag, and Problogger. When users would visit any sites using Sitemeter, they would be presented with an error message pop-up:Javascript is becoming the glue that enables client-side applications in browser to offer something akin to the desktop experience. Part of its appeal is that it is widely embedded in all browsers out of the box. This also means there is a wide range of javascript runtimes that the code has to run on with all the idiosyncrasities and permutations that come with it. It can be annoying, especially in the sub-par implementations from the many versions of Internet Explorer - however - it is no excuse to get something as badly wrong as Sitemeter did.
