jQuery's getJSON

I recently had a struggle getting jQuery's $.getJSON function to work on Internet Explorer (IE6 & IE7). I tried and tried to debug the javascript, but was getting no where. After giving up for a while and coming back to it the next day, I thought of checking the target file—the file jQuery was fetching asynchronously—for problems.

It turns out that IE doesn't like JSON encoded documents that are specified as UTF-8. Not sure what the problem is, but the document has to be returned in a format IE likes. If not, IE will not allow jQuery to process it. Now, I had a header on this file that specified the content-type and charset. But, I changed it and instead I put only the content-type at the top of my JSON-returning PHP files:

header("Content-Type: application/json");

Why does IE balk at UTF-8 specified charsets for JSON-encoded responses?? Who knows. But, from the research I've done, specifying the charset in the HTTP header is not something that is required.

http://firelitdesign.blogspot.com/2009/07/jquerys-getjson.html