I am trying to add an event handler on a page through javascript. What I tried is as follows,
var span=document.getElementById("WD67"); span.setAttribute("onchange","alert('hello');"); But though the event handler attribute gets added, it doesn't fire when the page is viewed in IE, however in Firefox it works properly. How do I get IE to recognize it?
var span = document.getElementById("WD67"); span.onchange = function(){ alert('hello'); }; 
Don't use attributes for that. The best way to add event handlers is using addEventListener (all modern browsers) or attachEvent (IE<9). Furthermore, use a handler function reference (wrap alert('hello') in a function).
A crossbrowser function to add handlers to elements:
function addHandler(obj,htype,fn){ if (obj.addEventListener){ obj.addEventListener(htype, fn); } else { obj.attachEvent('on'+htype,fn); } } // usage var mySpan=document.getElementById("WD67"); addHandler(mySpan,'change',function(){alert('hello')}); See also: this jsfiddle
obj.addEventListener(htype, fn, true); should do the trick there. See also: jsfiddle.net/PRAd3