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My Internet Explorer 11 on my Windows 8.1 Surface tablet defaults to document mode 7, causing a lot of websites to render wrongly.

When I open the Developer tools, it states that it defaults to document mode 7 because of Intranet-compatibility settings.

However, I haven't changed these settings manually and I'm browsing Internetpages!

I tried to reset the Internet Explorer settings without any luck.

Any ideas?

jim
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  • This is a duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22034924/how-to-set-ie11-document-mode-to-edge-as-default comment #3 works perfect for me – Wolfgang Mahlke Mar 04 '16 at 15:31

5 Answers5

137

By default, IE displays webpages in the Intranet zone in compatibility view. To change this:

  • Press Alt to display the IE menu.
  • Choose Tools | Compatibility View settings
  • Remove the checkmark next to Display intranet sites in Compatibility View.
  • Choose Close.

At this point, IE should rely on the webpage itself (or any relevant group policies) to determine the compatibility settings for your Intranet webpages.

Note that certain sites may no longer function correctly after making this change. You can use the same dialog box to add specific sites to enable compatibility view when needed.

ROMANIA_engineer
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Lance Leonard
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  • Hey Lance, the crazy thing is: I have this issue with public websites, such as stackoverflow.com, etc... Although these sites are Internet-sites (as opposed to Intranetsites), the dev tools mark the document mode as default to 7, because of intRAnet settings. – jim Dec 03 '14 at 19:28
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    Your solution helps, so I guess I should rephrase my question: how come internet-sites are seen as intranet-sites. – jim Dec 03 '14 at 19:30
  • That doesn't sound like behavior that should happen; you may need to investigate a few things. When it next happens with SO, right-click the page, choose Properties, and then see what zone the page is displayed in. Are you using a proxy? Perhaps that's forcing site to be displayed in the Intranet zone? Also, see if the site is in the list of sites to always view in Compatibility View (using the Compatibility settings dialog from earlier). If so, try removing the site from the list. Do you perhaps have compatibility settings established through group policy? – Lance Leonard Dec 04 '14 at 03:20
  • I checked a few things: SO and other sites open in the Intranet zone. The strange thing is that two tablets (Surface) have this strange behavior. IE11 on my laptop is working properly. All three computers have Windows 8.1, are on the same network, connected through the same wireless. Do you have any more ideas? – jim Dec 04 '14 at 07:52
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    So, I checked with some other sources and the consensus seems to be that if SO is being reported in the Intranet zone, then something's configured oddly. Possibly a .PAC proxy script, possibly the site zone mappings, possibly custom CV settings, possibly something else. (To view the full thread, see https://twitter.com/_Lance_Leonard/status/541333492399742977) In any event, those seem to be your best bet for next steps. – Lance Leonard Dec 06 '14 at 22:44
  • Hey Lance, thank you very much for all the effort you took. I will investigate it further with the information you and your friends provided. Hopefully I can post the answer (and solution) here. – jim Dec 08 '14 at 10:42
  • This is the correct answer and solved the issue. Thanks! Even if is used, IE can still render the page in IE5/IE7/etc style if compatible mode turned on. – Solaris_9 Aug 30 '18 at 03:00
  • May I just take this moment to add a "hallelujah"? Ta. – Fetchez la vache Nov 28 '19 at 10:09
115

If you are a developer, this is what you need to do:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" />
llioor
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  • He can't do that because it is not a site he created, it is public web sites like stackoverflow etc. This isn't even really a programming question. – Zack Aug 05 '16 at 18:48
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    @Zack: this topic is also the first search result for developers trying to fix problem with their own websites. – Rafał Swacha Aug 25 '16 at 10:24
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    @RafałSwacha, this is correct, I'm a programmer and I searched for this topic as well. I'm sure it will help other programmers. – llioor Sep 08 '16 at 12:53
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    This worked for me – WiredIn Oct 24 '16 at 15:11
  • @WiredIn yes it will work as well. The question was how to change the default "mode 7" and I recommended for the edge version as Microsoft tech team do as well "Because our goal with Microsoft Edge is to give users the best site and app viewing experience possible, we’ve decided to stop support for document modes." – llioor Feb 16 '17 at 10:28
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    IE=edge is the highest standards mode and functionally equivalent to an 'html5' DOCTYPE. Ref: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj676915(v=vs.85).aspx – Ed Randall Nov 23 '17 at 08:14
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    if you're not a developer and you're just trying to get websites to display in your browser properly then please, please stop using IE 11 – andrew Aug 03 '18 at 20:44
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    @llioor A bit late but `content="IE=edge"` refers to displaying the page in the Edge *document mode*, not "like Microsoft Edge". It's annoying that they named their new web browser the same as the 'evergreen' level of the document mode display type of their previous browser, because it causes confusion like this. The bottom line is that IE=edge is **not** the same thing as "display it like MS Edge". It means "display it like IE11". – TylerH Jan 27 '20 at 21:56
6

Thanks to all the investigations of Lance, I could find a solution to my problem. It possibly had to do with my ISP.

To summarize:

  • Internet sites were displayed in the Intranet zone
  • Because of that the document mode was defaulted to 5 or 7 instead of Edge

I unchecked the "Automatically detect settings" in the Local Area Network Settings (found in "Internet Options" > Connections > LAN Settings.

Now the sites are correctly marked as Internet sites (instead of Intranet sites).

jim
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1

If the problem is happening on a specific computer,then please try the following fix provided you have Internet Explorer 11.

Please open regedit.exe as an Administrator. Navigate to the following path/paths:

  1. For 32 bit machine:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION

  2. For 64 bit machine:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION & 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION

And delete the REG_DWORD value iexplore.exe.

Please close and relaunch the website using Internet Explorer 11, it will default to Edge as Document Mode.

Martin Evans
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Priyam Choudhury
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For the website ensure that IIS HTTP response headers setting and add new key X-UA-Compatible pointing to "IE=edge"

Click here for more details

If you have access to the server, the most reliable way of doing this is to do it on the server itself, in IIS. Go in to IIS HTTP Response Headers. Add Name: X-UA-Compatible Value: IE=edge This will override your browser and your code.

hemanth reddy
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