This question already has answers here:
IE10 renders in IE7 mode. How to force Standards mode?
(5 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
I am a developer on a web app that only works in IE11 if it is added to compatibility view(defaulting the document mode to 5). The problem is that there is a page within the web app that needs CSS :before which does not work correctly if the document mode is below 8. I've tried adding
<!DOCTYPE html>
and
<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="IE=8" >
But the page seems to be defaulting that page to document mode 7. I'm not too familiar with how IE works but is there any way around this?
If you're trying to avoid Compatibility mode, you need to specify it as follows:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=Edge">
The "Edge" mode tells IE to use the best available mode; thus IE11 should use IE11 mode.
If you're still getting stuck in the wrong mode, there are a few other things to check:
Make sure your HTML code is valid and starts with <!DOCTYPE html>. Invalid HTML or a missing doctype is likely to trigger IE to fall back into IE5 mode (also known as Quirks mode). This will clearly break most of the code for pretty much any modern site.
Check your browser and network settings; IE can be configured to override the compatibility settings and always put certain sites into compatibility mode. Typically this is for sites on the local network.
You can use the emulate option:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE8" />
Related
I have this html/jsp page:
<%#page contentType="text/html" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html ...
</html>
which, for some reason, is opened by default in compatibility mode on IE (in my case version 10) and this messes up everything as it just does not understand some modern constructs present in libraries such as angularjs.
By opening developer's tools and changing the view mode to "standard IE" everything fixes up and my web application works fine.
So, what's wrong with this header? Is there a way to force IE to open my page in normal mode?
This question is more or less the same of this one, I know that:
Why Does IE-8 push the view to Compact/Compatibility view?
but I don't want to force my user to open tools and set options like correct marked answer suggests: most of them are just ignorant, many of them have developers tools disabled on their company's PC.
In the end just want to see where's the problem with my web application and make so that IE accepts it as a normal page.
insert meta tag in header HTML:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=Edge"/>
The "edge" forces standards mode (or latest rendering engine) in IE.
To force IE8 to standard mode.
<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="IE=8">
This question already has answers here:
What does <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"> do?
(12 answers)
Closed 8 years ago.
What will this following tag will do to my browser when a HTML page is loaded?
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj676915(v=vs.85).aspx
Understanding legacy document modes
Use the following value to display the webpage in edge mode, which is
the highest standards mode supported by Internet Explorer, from
Internet Explorer 6 through IE11.
<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="IE=edge">
Note that this is functionally equivalent to using
the HTML5 doctype. It places Internet Explorer into the highest
supported document mode. Edge most is most useful for regularly
maintained websites that are routinely tested for interoperability
between multiple browsers, including Internet Explorer.
Note Starting with IE11, edge mode is considered the preferred document mode. (In
earlier versions, it was considered experimental.) To learn more, see
Document modes are deprecated. Starting with Windows Internet Explorer
8, some web developers used the edge mode meta element to hide the
Compatibility View button on the address bar. As of IE11, this is no
longer necessary as the button has been removed from the address bar.
Because it forces all pages to be opened in standards mode, regardless
of the version of Internet Explorer, you might be tempted to use edge
mode for all pages viewed with Internet Explorer. Don't do this, as
the X-UA-Compatible header is only supported starting with Internet
Explorer 8.
Tip If you want all supported versions of Internet
Explorer to open your pages in standards mode, use the HTML5 document
type declaration, as shown in the earlier example.
When I view my website in IE10, it seems that it's automatically forcing IE8 document standards. However, I would like it to use IE9 standards, when being viewed in IE10.
Is there a way to do this?
The page has <!DOCTYPE html> at the top.
EDIT: It turned out that I had <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" /> in the page header, which was causing the page to render in IE8 document mode. Changing this to IE=9 fixed the issue.
I recommend to use the X-UA meta tag. The X-UA-Compatible meta tag allows you to choose what version of Internet Explorer the page should be rendered as.
You specify the user agent and version to use in the contents of the tag. The current options you have for the content are: IE=5, IE=EmulateIE7, IE=7, IE=EmulateIE8, IE=8, IE=EmulateIE9, IE=9, IE=edge.
Emulating the version tells the browser to use the DOCTYPE to determine how to render content. Pages without a DOCTYPE will be rendered in quirks mode. If you tell it to use the browser version without emulating (i.e. IE=7) the browser will render the page in standards mode whether or not there is a DOCTYPE declaration. IE=edge tells Internet Explorer to use the highest mode available to that version of IE. Internet Explorer 8 can support up to IE8 modes, IE9 can support IE9 modes and so on.
I think you need this:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=9"/>
Use X-UA meta tag:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=9" />
And I don't know why you want to do this, as IE 10 is far more excellent than any of the previous versions of IE, if you are testing, you can press F12 and change the mode
I have two questions:
How can I force IE10 to render in IE9 document mode? Currently it's rendering my page in Standard document mode.
In IE10's developer toolbar, I am not able to see the option of document mode of IE10. Is it not implemented, or is my browser version is out of date?
Thanks for all your help.
Edit: thanks everyone for the solutions provided. Earlier I was using a meta tag
<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="IE=edge" >
just to make sure that IE will render the page in highest document mode, but I was facing some issues with IE10 standard mode, so I changed the meta tag to render the page in IE9 mode:
<meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="IE=9" >.
You should be able to do it using the X-UA meta tag:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=9" />
However, if you find yourself having to do this, you're probably doing something wrong and should take a look at what you're doing and see if you can do it a different/better way.
Do you mean you want to tell your copy of IE 10 to render the pages it views in IE 9 mode?
Or do you mean you want your website to force IE 10 to render it in IE 9 mode?
For the former:
To force a webpage you are viewing in Internet Explorer 10 into a particular document compatibility mode, first open F12 Tools by pressing the F12 key. Then, on the Browser Mode menu, click Internet Explorer 10, and on the Document Mode menu, click Standards.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ie/hh920756(v=vs.85).aspx
For the latter, the other answers are correct, but I wouldn't advise doing that. IE 10 is more standards-compliant (i.e. more similar to other browsers) than IE 9.
You can tweak the Registry if you want to make changes only to your own system. If you have IE10 and lots of web sites you visit don't render properly in IE10, then you can tweak your registry to force IE to open in IE9 mode.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION
Create a DWORD as iexplore.exe and give value 9999. Restart your IE and it will open in IE9 mode :)
Thanks to my colleague Sreejith D :)
I haven't seen this done before, but this is how it was done for emulating IE 8/7 when using IE 9:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE9">
If not, then try this one:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=9">
Add those to your header with the other meta tags. This should force IE10 to render as IE9.
Another option you could do (assuming you are using PHP) is add this to your .htaccess file:
Header set X-UA-Compatible "IE=9"
This will perform the action universally, rather than having to worry about adding the meta tag to all of your headers.
By what this says, IE10 (the article is referred to a preview release, anyway) it's able to use X-UA-Compatible only if the document is in quirks mode (no DOCTYPE), otherwise IE10 won't react to the request.
Here's an excerpt:
Thus, to make IE10 react to the X-UA-Compatible directive, one must either create a page that triggers quirks-mode per the rules of HTML5 (that is: an a page with no doctype). One can also send the directive as a HTTP header, however: A HTTP sent directive appears to have no effect if you use it to downgrade the rendering — it can only be used to upgrade the rendering
So, you've to do it manually with Dvelopers Tools, or with quirks mode (but I suggest to stay in IE10 mode which is for the first time aligned to the other browers' standard)
EDIT: The follows are some useful link to read:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288325(v=vs.85).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj676915(v=vs.85).aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/12/14/interoperable-html5-quirks-mode-in-ie10.aspx
You can force IE10 to render in IE9 mode by adding:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=9">
in your <head> tag.
See MSDN for more information...
there are many ways can do this:
add X-UA-Compatible
tag to head
http response header
using IE tools F12
change windows Registry
The hack is recursive. It is like IE itself uses the component that is used by many other processes which want "web component". Hence in registry we add IEXPLORE.exe. In effect it is a recursive hack.
I found this post while I was looking for a solution to my DNN6 website.
The error was
SCRIPT5007: Unable to get property 'documentElement' of undefined or
null reference
But I needed the same solution: force compability mode to IE9. So let me share with you what I did to solve this.
So, for DotNetNuke 6 users try the StyleHelper SkinObject
Worked great for me!
I have a website depending on vector drawing, for Internet Explorer I'm using VML and for other browsers I'm using SVG.
IE8 however, doesn't have support for neither without falling back to IE7-mode which has VML.
Therefore I'm including <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />.
The problem (well, actually a good thing) is that IE9 now has support for SVG so I don't want it to fall back to IE7-mode which has much worse performance and compatibility. How do I tell only IE8 to fall back to IE7-mode but let IE9 stay in IE9-mode?
Right now I'm doing a server side check on the agent whether to include the EmulateIE7-string in the head or not but I want to avoid this as far as it's possible.
I just had a play and found the following works for me:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7,IE=9" >
That is with a comma not a semi colon!
I haven't looked at the spec, but the format is similar to content="IE=7,chrome=1" that works for Chrome Frame. I also found that content="IE=7,9" works but I suspect that is not a correct format.
Edit:
Beware of a serious problem if your page is in a iframe. If you use the above in a framed page where the parent is in any mode less than IE9 strict, then IE9 will fall back to IE8 mode (ignoring the IE=7 request!). Any known workarounds welcome :) Might not be relevant to IE11.
The above seems to be a side effect of the by design feature, that iframes (and I presume frames) are either all in IE9 mode, or all are less than IE9 mode. One can never mix IE9 frames with < IE9 frames, see MS issues #599022 and #635648.
Edit 2:
Beware that IE11 only supports "IE=edge" (not IE=11), and that using IE=edge has significant effects upon IE functionality (including the user agent).
Edit 3:
Fantastic flow chart explaining how IE works out what mode to use for IE9
IE=edge is supported by IE8 through to IE11.
The Meta tag takes precedence over the HTTP header (which can be used instead of the meta tag)
Some more X-UA-Compatible info for IE10.
Edit 4:
X-UA-Compatible was removed from the Microsoft Edge browser. Only Internet Explorer has the compatibility modes. Beware that if you are using the WebView within an App on Windows Phone 10, then you are still using IE11 (not Edge).
Also for a variety of reasons you cannot trust the user agent to tell you the correct compatibility level, instead use document.documentMode from JavaScript.
Edit 5:
IE11 still needs X-UA-Compatible set to IE=EDGE for some corner cases e.g. a customer using IE11 from ActiveX (as WebView within a wrapper application) can drop IE11 back to IE7 mode if you don't set this.
The dual mode mentioned by someone else should work (but doesn't as shown by Microsoft) and is the closest thing I've seen in MS documentation that should work as described. There's an update below that shows the proper form the meta attribute value should take.
So if you use this:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7; IE=EmulateIE9">
Unfortunately, what you will get is IE8 rendering as IE8 because of the fuzzy version vectoring that the x-ua-compatible engine does. See this document:
Defining Document Compatibility: Understanding Content Attribute Values on MSDN.
In that section, you'll see that in the first half, they define any version vector defined as larger than the current browser version will be interpreted as the largest available rendering engine. Therefore, emulateIE9 get's translated down to emulateIE8. Stupid.
Then, in the same breath practically, they talk about using multiple version vectors as in the code snippet above to exclude a particular engine. But because of the fuzzy version logic, that would never work. Ah, Microsoft. Fail again.
The reason why using CCs around the meta won't work, is that the browser must have chosen a rendering engine by the time it hits a CC. The x-ua meta must come before anything else in the header except other metas or the title according to MS's own documentation.
If anyone can figure this out, I'm all ears because I'm desperate to exclude IE8 from support while including IE9.
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
Robocat points out, using a comma instead of a semi-colon as Micrsoft shows is the correct way of doing this. I tested it and it worked for me. I've updated my test page.
So the correct form is this (as suggested by robocat):
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7, IE=9">
The incorrect form is this (as suggested by Microsoft):
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7; IE=9">
I have so far used all these, nothing works on IE9:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE8" >
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" >
<httpProtocol>
<customHeaders>
<clear />
<add name="X-UA-Compatible" value="IE=EmulateIE8" />
</customHeaders>
</httpProtocol>
this is so frustrating, none of these meta tags seems to be working. Microsoft, What is so difficult in supporting stuff you say should work in your documentation? we have to spend hours doing browser wars. You are wasting everyone's time.
If you want IE 8 to use IE7 standards and IE 9 to use IE9 standards this one worked for me:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7, IE=9">
For IE9 this gives me IE 9 compatibility mode with IE 9 standards.
For IE8 this gives me Browser Mode IE8 Document Mode IE7 Standards
This one works for IE9 to me.
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE8"/>
I think what you need is:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7; IE=EmulateIE9">
according to
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/06/16/ie-s-compatibility-features-for-site-developers.aspx as it states this as "... an example that combines values so that IE8 renders a webpage in IE7 Standards mode while IE9 renders the webpage in IE9’s Standards mode:"
However I for one can't get this to work.
Wow Microsoft have really created a nightmare here. We're going to be talking about this well into the future!
Anyway this works for me.
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7; IE=EmulateIE9" />
<!--[if IE 8]>
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />
<![endif]-->
It's called conditional comments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_comment