I found this wonderfully created interactive tarantula on my travels around the web, a true showcase of what is capable with a creative mind and a flair for technology.]]>

I found this wonderfully created interactive tarantula on my travels around the web, a true showcase of what is capable with a creative mind and a flair for technology. I’ve made a few enemies of arachnophobes around the building by sending this to people disguised in a TinyURL link (sorry Lorna!). It was worth it though…

So while the following code would leak memory through the return obj;

    function createButton() {
      var obj = document.createElement("button");
      obj.innerHTML = "click me";
      obj.onclick = function() {
        //handle onclick
      }
      obj.onmouseover = function() {
        //handle onmouseover
      }
      return obj;//return a object which has memory leak problem in IE6
    }

    var dButton = document.getElementsById("d1").appendChild(createButton());
    //skipped...

Putting the try … finally construct in will fix your memory leak problems:

    function createButton() {
      var obj = document.createElement("button");
      obj.innerHTML = "click me";
      obj.onclick = function() {
        //handle onclick
      }
      obj.onmouseover = function() {
        //handle onmouseover
      }

      //this helps to fix the memory leak issue
      try {
        return obj;

      } finally {
        obj = null;
      }
    }

    var dButton = document.getElementsById("d1").appendChild(createButton());
    //skipped...

There are more demos and proof of concepts over at the blog of Hedger Wang.