c# - "SCRIPT5 Access is denied" error on IE9 when firing .click() from onchange

Question

We want to reduce the number of steps it takes for a user to upload a file on our website; so we're using jQuery to open and postback files using the below markup (simplified):

<a onclick="$('#uplRegistrationImage').click();">
    Change profile picture
</a>

<!-- Hidden to keep the UI clean -->
<asp:FileUpload ID="uplRegistrationImage" 
                runat="server" 
                ClientIDMode="static"
                Style="display:none"
                onchange="$('#btnSubmitImage').click();"    />

<asp:Button runat="server" 
            ID="btnSubmitImage" 
            ClientIDMode="static" 
            Style="display:none" 
            OnClick="btnSubmitImage_OnClick" 
            UseSubmitBehavior="False" />

This works absolutely fine in Firefox and Chrome; opening the file dialog when the link is clicked and firing the postback when a file is selected.

However in IE9 after the file upload has loaded and a user has selected a file; insteaed of the OnChange working I get a "SCRIPT5 Access is denied" error. I've tried setting an arbitrary timeout, setting intervals to check if a file is given to no avail.

There are a number of other questions relating to this; however none appear to have a decent answer (One said set the file dialog to be transparent and hover behind a button!)

Has anyone else resolved this? Or is it absolutely necessary that I provide a button for IE users?

Answer 1

For security reasons, what you are trying to do is not possible. It seems to be the IE9 will not let you submit a form in this way unless it was an actual mouse click on the File Upload control that triggers it.

For arguments sake, I was able to use your code to do the submit in the change handler, but it worked only when I clicked the Browse button myself. I even set up polling in the $(document).ready method for a variable set by the change handler that indicates a submission should be triggered - this didn't work either.

The solutions to this problem appear to be:

1. Styling the control in such a way that it sits behind a button. You mentioned this in your question, but the answer provided by Romas here In JavaScript can I make a "click" event fire programmatically for a file input element? does in fact work (I tried in IE9, Chrome v23 and FF v15).
2. Using a Flash-based approach (GMail does this). I tried out the Uploadify demo and it seems to work quite nicely.

Styling a File Upload:

http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/inputfile.html

http://www.shauninman.com/archive/2007/09/10/styling_file_inputs_with_css_and_the_dom

References:

jQuery : simulating a click on a <input type="file" /> doesn't work in Firefox?

IE9 file input triggering using Javascript

getting access is denied error on IE8