onbeforeunload Message Appears Twice (Internet Explorer)

I have the following script on my ASP.NET web page to warn the user when they are navigating away from a page with unsaved changes.

$(document).ready(function() {
    $('input:not(:button,:submit),textarea,select').change(function () {
        window.onbeforeunload = function () {
            return 'Changes made to this page have not been saved!';
        }
    });
});

This works just as intended except for some problems when the user is using Internet Explorer and attempts to navigate away using a link like this one.

<div onclick="window.location=&#39;http://www.domain.com&#39;;">Text</div>

If the user selects "Stay on this page", the message box appears twice. And then if they select "Stay on this page" the second time, the debugger highlights the link above with the message:

Microsoft JScript runtime error: Unspecified error.

This problem appears to be specific to Internet Explorer. Searching the Web, I've been able to find numerous references to what seem like related bugs, incredibly going back several versions of Internet Explorer. Yet, I've unable to find any comment from Microsoft or a reasonable fix. Here are a few of the links I've found that appear related.

1. http://forums.asp.net/t/1199756.aspx/1
2. Why is my onbeforeunload handler causing an "Unspecified error" error?
3. http://www.telerik.com/community/forums/aspnet-ajax/tabstrip/cancel-on-onbeforeunload-in-ie-6-7-create-js-unspecified-error.aspx
4. http://scottonwriting.net/sowblog/archive/2005/04/19/163068.aspx
5. http://www.techtalkz.com/internet-explorer/116662-onbeforeunload-dialog-cancel-button-when-window-location-href-bug.html
6. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=14213927
7. http://www.webmasterkb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/jscript/4321/IE7-and-onbeforeunload
8. http://www.bi开发者_高级运维gresource.com/ASP-Javascript-Unspecified-Error-BHoy7ptS.html
9. https://web.archive.org/web/20210417082636/http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/042005-1.aspx

Can anyone suggest a workaround? Doesn't look like Connect is accepting IE bug reports. I'm using IE9

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We ran into the same issue in IE11.

It turns out that assigning window.location = "http://www.domain.com" will cause this problem in IE.

If you instead use location.href = "http://www.domain.com", it will only prompt the user once.

Hopefully this helps someone out!

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A URL is not a valid value for the onclick attribute. onclick specifies JavaScript to run; if you want to navigate somewhere on click of a div, you have 2 main choices:

1. wrap the div in an <a href="yoururl">

2. write JS to do the same thing, something like:

The former method is the better one.

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It's unfortunately that, although this problem appears to have first shown up in previous versions of Internet Explorer, this continues to be a bug in IE9.

I tried submitting the issue on Microsoft Connect but was unable to.

At any rate, the problem is related to exiting a page via JavaScript. The problem was solved by wrapping my <div> in an anchor tag <a href="..."><div></div></a>. Using a regular link, the problem has been solved for now.