In IE you have to use attachEvent rather than the standard addEventListener.

A common practice is to check if the addEventListener method is available and use it, otherwise use attachEvent:

if (el.addEventListener){

  el.addEventListener('click', modifyText, false); 

} else if (el.attachEvent){

  el.attachEvent('onclick', modifyText);

}

You can make a function to do it:

function bindEvent(el, eventName, eventHandler) {

  if (el.addEventListener){

    el.addEventListener(eventName, eventHandler, false); 

  } else if (el.attachEvent){

    el.attachEvent('on'+eventName, eventHandler);

  }

}

// ...

bindEvent(document.getElementById('myElement'), 'click', function () {

  alert('element clicked');

});

You can run an example of the above code here.

The third argument of addEventListener is useCapture; if true, it indicates that the user wishes to initiate event capturing.