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On microsoft's site they claim that simple doctype declaration is enough. But even a document as short as this falls back to IE7 mode:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
   <title></title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

http://d.pr/i/fvzb+

firedev
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5 Answers5

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Internet Explorer makes the assumption that most webpages were written to target earlier versions of IE and looks at the doctype, meta tags and HTML to determine the best compatibility mode (sometimes incorrectly). Even with a HTML5 doctype IE will still place your website in compatibility mode if it's an intranet site.

To ensure that your website always uses the latest standards mode you can either make sure Display intranet sites in Compatibly is turned off. However you have to do this on each machine local to the web server (instructions are below).

Alternatively, and better yet, you can use the X-UA-Compatible header to turn this off from the server. It's important to note that using the meta tag will not work!

<!-- Doesn't always work! -->
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" />

Throughout MSDN it's mentioned that using a host header or a meta tag should override even intranet sites. The article Understanding compatibility modes in internet explorer 8 says the following.

A large number of internal business web sites are optimized for Internet Explorer 7 so this default exception preserves that compatibility. ... Again if a Meta tag or http header is used to set a compatibility mode to the document it will override these settings.

However, in practice this will not work, using a host header is the only option that works. The comments section of the article also shows numerous examples of this exact issue.

Using a Meta tag also has several other issues such as ignoring the tag if it's not directly under the <head> tag or if there is too much data before it (4k). It may also trigger the document to be reparsed in some versions of IE which will slow down rendering. You can read more about these issues at the MSDN article Best Practice: Get your HEAD in order.

Adding the X-UA-Compatible header

If you are using .NET and IIS you can add this to the web.config, you could also do this programmatically:

<system.webServer>
  <httpProtocol>
    <customHeaders>
      <add name="X-UA-Compatible" value="IE=edge" />
    </customHeaders>
  </httpProtocol>
</system.webServer>

If you're not using IIS it's easy to do in any language. For example, here's how to do it in PHP:

header('X-UA-Compatible: IE=edge');

As long as the X-UA-Compatible header is present with the HTML5 doctype, a site will always run in the latest standards mode.

Turning off Compatibility View
It may still be useful to turn off Compatibility View. To do so untick Display all intranet sites in compatibility view in the Compatibility View Settings.

Compatibility View Settings

You can bring this up by hitting Alt to get the menu.

enter image description here

Edit This answer also pertains to IE9.

Callum Watkins
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Daniel Little
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  • Pardon my ignorance, but how to get to this Settings sheet? I checked Internet explorer settings, right-clicked the compatibility view in address bar - nothing. – firedev Nov 08 '12 at 16:20
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    @Nick use `alt` to bring up the toolbar, it's under tools -> compat view settings – Daniel Little Nov 08 '12 at 23:16
  • Oh thank you, looks like that solved it. Makes one wonder why did they do that at all. – firedev Nov 09 '12 at 05:00
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    +1000 ;). SO should force every OP to see this answer, when they are having any [IE] tag and a word "compatible" in their question, even before they actually post that question. – Teemu Nov 21 '12 at 13:31
  • If you're using Apache, refer to the section ["Set server level response header"](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/hanuk/archive/2008/08/28/apache-httpd-configuration-for-ie7-standard-mode-rendering-in-ie8.aspx) – Pakman Jul 18 '13 at 21:49
  • +1 for sharing this. Huge help! Btw, does anyone know by any chance whether this option is checked by default? One of my colleagues claims that he never actually checked it manually but it was there (He is a Tester and this screwed the layout of our webapp and that's why I landed on this page in the first place :P) – Niks Jul 25 '13 at 06:21
  • @Nikhil Display intranet sites in compatibility mode IS checked by default. – Daniel Little Jul 25 '13 at 06:53
  • @Lavinski: Ohh! If that is so then the issue boils down to the developer's machines! We never *unchecked* it manually! :-/ Anyway, thanks a lot! – Niks Jul 25 '13 at 07:25
  • For a developer who doesn't have control over the header tags that are sent back (i.e. they do not administer IIS, have the right permissions, etc.) -- you can just put this in your HTML head element: `` – BrainSlugs83 Aug 05 '13 at 20:19
  • Meta tag wasn't necessary for me. Solution in this answer worked, but I had to restart IE. – Peter Aug 23 '13 at 11:42
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    I tried adding the custom headers section to the project's web.config. It would appear that setting doesn't override the IE setting for using compatibility view for intranet sites. – DomenicDatti Aug 29 '13 at 13:21
  • I had written custom JS and server side detection algorithms to figure out if compatibility mode was happening and then redirecting users to a page to allow them to disable it...this fixed everything. I wish I could upvote 10x times!!! Thanks so much. – Jeff Johnson Sep 23 '13 at 20:16
  • Please note that (according to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj676914(v=vs.85).aspx) both the meta tag AND the header solution will not override IE10's decision to use compatibility mode when accessing an intranet site. If anyone has a solution for this that doesn't require a change to all users's IE settings, I'm all ears. – Bram Vandenbussche May 23 '14 at 14:35
  • The meta tag has always worked for me as long as it's the first tag in the head section or second only to – xr280xr Aug 11 '14 at 15:36
  • You've said the `meta` tag "will not" (or "doesn't always") work, but you say nothing about why you say that, what evidence you have for it, etc. What's the genesis of those statements? Especially the strong "will not" which is flatly wrong: It absolutely **does** work in the normal case. If you know of edge cases where it doesn't, that would be useful information. – T.J. Crowder Sep 12 '14 at 07:52
  • @T.J. Crowder regarding evidence there is little to no documentation on the issue but it's relatively easy to test for yourself. You may have missed that this answer pertains to `intranet sites` not just the general case which may be the link you are missing. Regardless I've added some more references which I think may help. – Daniel Little Sep 15 '14 at 00:11
  • @DanielLittle: I *have* tried it myself, with intranet pages, which is why I asked the question. It works just fine. You've said (even in the edit) that *"...in practice using a host header is the only option that will work."* but that's simply not correct: If the `meta` tag is early enough that the browser isn't committed to compatibility view (and within the first 4k, ***sigh***), it *does* work. I've been happily using it after the `meta charset` and before `title` (which I see is also what Eric Law recommends in the article you linked; cool). – T.J. Crowder Sep 15 '14 at 07:11
  • This does not work for me with IE10 and an intranet site (i.e. a web app in development). I have the header "X-UA-Compatible: IE=edge" and " ". IE is and always had been more trouble than every other browser put together. – Sam Watkins Dec 03 '15 at 03:46
25

This works for me..

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" />
JGilmartin
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    N.B. as Lavinski says above, "the meta tag doesn't do anything for intranet sites." – Nathan Jun 04 '13 at 18:40
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    For what it's worth, for a hosted website (non-intranet site) that has the `X-UA-Compatible` meta tag, yet still isn't triggering IE10 Standards document mode as Page Default, I found that if the meta tag is located below script tags or is just too far from the top of the `` in the DOM tree, IE10 cries and sets the document mode to IE8 Standards. So, keep your `IE=edge` meta tag close the `` tag. Not always a simple a fix for Wordpress sites when it's not hard-coded in the header template file. Not sure if IE11 cares where the meta tag is, but hope this proves helpful to someone. – purefusion Oct 16 '13 at 15:45
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    For blind copy and pasters such as myself, that is missing the closing tag. . – John Newman Jan 07 '14 at 18:00
  • You only need to close the meta tag if you are using the XHTML doctype – Andy Brudtkuhl Jan 31 '14 at 22:31
  • You could also just add a '/' before the closing '>' – JacobTheDev Feb 05 '14 at 16:20
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    Also this tag needs to be the first tag inside – Chris Gunawardena Feb 25 '14 at 23:45
10

Try adding the following tag to the head

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=11,IE=10,IE=9,IE=8" />
Jeow Li Huan
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2

The meta tag doesn't do anything for intranet sites and my issue was IE10 rendering in IE10 compatibility mode. What tackled the issue for me was taking @Jeow's answer further and using that value in an http header by adding the following to web.config under IIS:

<system.webServer>
  <httpProtocol> 
    <customHeaders> 
      <clear />
      <!-- <add name="X-UA-Compatible" value="IE=edge" /> not good enough -->
      <add name="X-UA-Compatible" value="IE=11,IE=10,IE=9,IE=8" /> 
    </customHeaders> 
  </httpProtocol>
</system.webServer>

For IE purposes, intranet sites include public-facing sites that are not routed to externally - for example a Stackoverflow employee working from the office would probably see stackoverflow.com in compatibility mode.

Community
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Oleg
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1

It worked perfectly for me when i did the folowing:

On http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg699338(v=vs.85).aspx

Used the exact example they provide in the first box(added the missing </html> at the bottom), opened it in IE10 and standards was forced, i think you may need actual content in the html for it to force standards not sure though.

My suggestion would be to replace your empty code with actual content(something simple) and see what it does.

ZacNespral21
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