This is related to SSL and mixed content due to CSS background images but that question had no accepted answer and the one I\'m asking is a little more specific.
Under s
After countless hours of the same problem, I couldn't figure out the problem. I then began picking through my source code and I found it. I'm using HTML5, and I'm using a shiv inside of a conditional comment to make HTML5 elements work in IE8 and down.
<!--[if lte IE 8]><script src="http://html5shiv.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"></script><![endif]-->
My issue was that IE8 and down was throwing an error. That issue was solved by changing the above into a https, with the following:
<!--[if lte IE 8]><script src="https://html5shiv.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"></script><![endif]-->
I haven't tested it, but I imagine the following might work too.
<!--[if lte IE 8]><script src="//html5shiv.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"></script><![endif]-->
It might save somebody down the road. If not, then good luck!
Using the fully-qualified URI will avoid the problem of IE8 and below incorrectly creating a bogus URI like about:/relative/file.png that triggers the mixed content warning. This problem was fixed in IE9.
I think the reason you're getting different results is not because the one method is "safer," but because the offending URL isn't present in the base document when IE loads it. I expect you'll get the warning if you were to place that A
directly in the document instead of scripting it in after the page has loaded.
If I'm right in my diagnosis, this would mean there's no as-yet-undocumented quirk to the rules about mixed content.
Also: protocol-relative URLs are awesome. Just in general.