HELP: Accessing object methods/variables across nested documents in IE7

[davidfass]

I have two questions for the brave of heart:

(1) I have a main page (http://jewishintellectualtimeline.com/
index.html) which loads a page "test_map.html" inside an OBJECT (which
in turn is inside a DIV), like so:

<div id="object_wrapper">....
<OBJECT data="test_map.html" width="100%" height="100%">
<p>Sorry, the map could not be loaded due to browser limitations.</p>
</OBJECT> ...</div>

(The reasons for using the OBJECT here are related to limitations of
the Google Maps API. Not relevant.) Now, in the loaded
"test_map.html" I have the following script code to assign a name
"gWindow" to this loaded window:

window.name = "gWindow";

The reason I do this is because I want to be able to call functions in
"test_map.html" from the parent file "index.html". For example, I
have code in "index.html" like

onclick="javascript:gWindow.loadMap([[32.536389,44.420833]],
[[30.5364,42.4208],[34.5364,46.4208]],['Babylonia'])...

which calls the loadMap function defined in "test_map.html".

The upshot is that all this works fine in Firefox (no errors from
Firebug). But in IE7, I get an error saying that "'gWindow' is
undefined". Any ideas why IE7 cannot see this variable, while Firefox
can? Workarounds?


(2) And there is a related issue, which is that the page
"test_map.html" loaded inside the OBJECT does not see "window.parent"
as the parent index.html, but rather identifies itself
("test_map.html") as window.parent. I'm (obviously) not a
professional programmer, so I'm wondering whether the fact that it
works in Firefox is due to a laxity there, or whether there is some IE
bug that's getting in the way here. Can anyone illuminate, please?

Thanks a ton for any help! -- Dave