Have you tried:
– deactivating all plugins to see if this resolves the problem. If this works, re-activate the plugins one by one until you find the problematic plugin(s).
– switching to the Twenty Eleven theme to rule out any theme-specific problems.
– resetting the plugins folder by FTP or PhpMyAdmin. Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems.
Yes, I have done all that. The problem remains.
The problem disappears if fewer names are in the Author dropdown.
With about 250 names, if I click on the dropdown, then IE sits for about 3 seconds and then displays the dropdown. It gets slower as I add names and eventually the “Stop running this script” dialog starts popping up.
Here’s a possible clue…
If I remove this line from wp-admin/admin-header.php:
ajaxurl = '<?php echo admin_url('admin-ajax.php'); ?>',
the problem disappears.
Stop running this script?
A script on this page is causing Internet Explorer to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive.
Not a wp problem.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/175500
I’m afraid I must (respectfully) disagree. In the same browser, on a different web page, I just opened and operated a dropdown with 5000 entries. It was speedy and had no delays. In contrast, the Author dropdown on wp-admin/post.php has only 700 items and it breaks as described above.
The appearance of the “Stop running this script” dialog is not an error. It indicates that some JavaScript has run for a long time, longer than a threshold.
So I believe this does indeed look like a wp problem.
A slow running script is not necessarily a bug. Running slow also is not broken. Not running or running in a loop is broken.
You most likely would not have noticed if the browser did not say anything.
The browser can be adjusted as to how often it polls. It has that feature because MS anticipated slooooooow scripts.
But, here is how to report a bug if you are so inclined, http://codex.wordpress.org/Reporting_Bugs.
You’re right that a slow-running script isn’t necessarily a bug, but in this case, we’re talking a completely frozen browser for many seconds, even before the dialog appears. Trust me, when your browser hangs for 10 seconds, you notice. 🙂
Because of the following facts:
1. IE displays other, much larger dropdowns (outside of wp) without any delay
2. Firefox displays the wp Author dropdown without any delay, regardless of the number of entries
I suspect wp has an IE-specific JavaScript bug, and I will report it. Thanks.
This is now Trac ticket 18022.
