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The below prevents the form to be submitted in Chrome, FF and Safari - but not in IE nor Opera:

The JavaScript:

function validateAll() {
var fFirstname = document.getElementById('firstname');
    if (fFirstname.value == "") {
        invalidFirstname.style.display = "block";
        firstname.className = "Standard-Req";
        firstname.focus();
        alert('Please fill out First Name.');
        return false;
    }

The HTML:

<form name="Contact" action="somefile.php" method="post" onSubmit="return validateAll();">
<input type="text" name="firstname" class="Standard" id="firstname">
<input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Send Message" class="btn-Standard">
</form>

Now, if I get rid of the 3 commands before ALERT, it works in IE and Opera... Like this:

function validateAll() {
var fFirstname = document.getElementById('firstname');
    if (fFirstname.value == "") {
        alert('Please fill out First Name.');
        return false;
    }

I'd really like to be able to change the class, show an error icon (invalidFirstname) and focus the field if no data has been entered... Is this possible??

share|improve this question
invalidFirstname is not declared inside your function. Is it declared outside? If not, it can be causing an error. – bfavaretto May 17 '12 at 1:51
Nevermind, I'm an idiot. firstname.className and firstname.focus needs to be fFirstname and fFocus of course. Strange that it worked in 3 browsers though... – user1388462 May 17 '12 at 1:58
@user1388462 some browsers are more forgiving that the others :) – SiGanteng May 17 '12 at 2:05
@user1388462—it probably worked in those browsers because you have an element with a name or id of "invalidFirstname". Names and IDs are made global variables in IE (a bad design decision), other browsers grudgingly (perhaps illadvisedly) copied the behaviour to be compliant with sites written for IE that used the feature. It's that kind of non-standard behaviour that enforces the rule to stick to standards and don't use non-standard features except as a fallback for a missing standard feature. – RobG May 17 '12 at 2:23

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