Weird. I thought declaring variables in JavaScript was more of a "good practice" than a requirement. I always do it but wouldn't think that it would break the script.

I agree, that is weird

If I understand correctly, declaring a var within a function block changes the scope of the variable from the global scope (window) to the local scope (function), thus avoids namespace collisions if you have like-variable names in the global scope. Maybe this is why it worked in my environment, I didn't have any other javascript on the page besides this function.

??? Glad you got it to work though !!!

:-)

I read that declaring it in the global scope (outside the function body) will produce errors if you try and reuse the xmlHttp object, so place it in your function and re-declare it as null for each use.

Did you change the values of your alertContents function from xmlHttp to this, when the xmlHttp is no longer in the global scope (when it is declared in the function)?

IF not your function might have trouble seeing those values ?

I'm tired, sorry I can't be of more help ... but it was working in all of my browsers earlier today.

G'night

Got it to work now. Thanks for all the help.

On the global/local declaration issue, one of the things going on is that Firefox's JS interpreter correctly handles variable scope (the variable only exists inside of the scope where it's declared) and IE's does not (all variables are effectively global).