Why Does Jquery's Ajax Automatically Run Scripts?

I noticed recently that if jQuery ajax is called right after injecting jQuery into an inner iframe, jQuery loses its functions - like jQuery(..).dialog(), .draggable, and any other

Solution 1:

As someone answered earlier (whose answer got deleted?), jQuery ajax automatically chooses what to do depending on what type of content you requested. (An unfortunately under-documented feature). loading an external js will not just return when the browser has fetched the script, it will also run the script.

Whenever you re-include jQuery at a later point, it rewrites the window.jQuery object, therefore removing the jQuery.prototype.dialog, etc.

The Firefox .watch function can be helpful in cases like this, to see where something got redefined. This, for example, would give you a stack trace of anything that redefines jQuery:

window.watch('jQuery',function() { console.trace() } )