Force "Internet Explorer 8" browser mode in intranet

html internet-explorer-8 ie8-compatibility-mode x-ua-compatible ie8-browser-mode
Dennis C picture Dennis C · Apr 30, 2010 · Viewed 93.2k times · Source

There are "Internet Explorer 8", "Internet Explorer 8 Compatibility Mode", and IE7 mode in IE8.

However, the default setting in IE make all intranet website use "IE8 Compatibility Mode" even I have setted doctype, the meta tag, http header as suggested to force it into IE8 mode.

I have

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

and

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

But it still goes into "IE8 Compatibility Mode", without any changes in IE setting.

How to force it into pure "IE8" mode, without change any browser's setting?

PS. I am not talking "document mode" here.

Answer

Dennis C picture Dennis C · May 3, 2010

Seem that MSFT has not consider a large intranet environment that we have many different web application running inside.

There is no way to bypass the IE8 setting, according to somewhere I read on MSDN forum.

So, I will have to beg my system administrators to put some new group policies to change "Compatibility View" setting and the value and prevent user change the value, until MSFT discover this bug and fix it.

From an MSDN blog post (emphasis theirs): "Browser Mode is chosen before IE requests web content. This means that sites cannot choose a Browser Mode."

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