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I just received a new computer at work, with IE8 set to render all sites as IE7. This was a shock to me. Does anyone know if ALL installations of IE8 default to IE7 rendering? And if so, is there anything a web developer can do to force IE8 rendering?

Matrym
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1 Answers1

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As I know by default IE8 renders only intranet sites as IE7. To disable this go to Tools -> Compatibility View Settings and uncheck "Display intranet sites in Compatibility view". Also there is a checkbox "Display all sites in Compatibility view" in this dialog - it looks like it's checked for you. It's not standart setting, maybe it is your domain policy.

Anyway, if you need to force IE8 to render pages as IE8 use X-UA-Compatible http header. You can add meta tag in a head section of your page, like this:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />

MSDN

bniwredyc
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  • I've added that tag, but IE8 set to render as IE7 seems to ignore it. Thanks for the tip on intranet sites - and I'm glad to hear that the compatability view isn't a standard setting. Can anyone else confirm this? – Matrym Dec 16 '10 at 06:52
  • @Matrym: see "Controlling Default Rendering" section of the article (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288325(v=vs.85).aspx#Defaults) – bniwredyc Dec 16 '10 at 07:04
  • @Matrym: what is an output of "alert(document.documentMode)" javascript? – bniwredyc Dec 16 '10 at 07:06
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    I'm with Matrym in this. I'm using " " and " " and my site is STILL identifying as IE7 for css rendering and "7" for documentMode for an Intranet site. – Graham Aug 09 '11 at 18:41
  • I ran into this running IE 11, and unchecking said checkbox fixed it for me as well. – Brian J Dec 05 '14 at 20:18