Ran into this problem today, posting in case someone else has the same issue.
var execBtn = document.createElement('input');
execBtn.setAttribute("type", "button");
execBtn.setAttribute("id", "execBtn");
execBtn.setAttribute("value", "Execute");
execBtn.setAttribute("onclick", "runCommand();");
Turns out to get IE to run an onclick on a dynamically generated element, we can't use setAttribute. Instead, we need to set the onclick property on the object with an anonymous function wrapping the code we want to run.
execBtn.onclick = function() { runCommand() };
BAD IDEAS:
You can do
execBtn.setAttribute("onclick", function() { runCommand() });
but it will break in IE in non-standards mode according to @scunliffe.
You can't do this at all
execBtn.setAttribute("onclick", runCommand() );
because it executes immediately, and sets the result of runCommand() to be the onClick attribute value, nor can you do
execBtn.setAttribute("onclick", runCommand);
