Configuring Servers for Internet Explorer 8

[wige]

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 is designed to be more standards compliant than previous versions. As a result, certain hacks in web sites can cause those sites to display incorrectly in Internet Explorer 8. This can be addressed by forcing browsers to render your site in what is called "compatibility mode". The following instructions detail how to enable compatibility mode site wide, if your site is hosted on an Apache server.

Setting Compatibility Mode for all visitors on Apache

Enabling compatibility mode on an Apache server requires the ability to create and edit .htaccess files, and mod_headers must be installed on the server. Most shared and dedicated hosting plans should allow this.

Simply add the following line to your .htaccess file.

Header set X-UA-Compatible "IE=EmulateIE7"

Setting Compatibility Mode for everyone but the webmaster

If you will be testing your site, and want your own browser to work without compatibility mode, you can specify certain IP addresses that will not be shown the header.

First, create a list of IP addresses that should not have compatibility mode. Add the following line to the .htaccess file, changing 1.2.3.4 to the appropriate address. Each IP address would require a seperate line.

SetEnvIf Remote_Addr 1.2.3.4 webmaster

This assigns the code "webmaster" to each specified IP address. Now, you would add the compatability header, telling it to display if the visitor has not been given the "webmaster" code. This is done by adding the following line to the .htaccess file after the lines you added above.

Header set X-UA-Compatible "IE=EmulateIE7" env=!webmaster

Everyone not from the specified IP address will be put in compatibility mode by default. Those visiting the site from the specified IP address(es) can enable compatibility if they want, but it will be disabled by default.

Setting Compatibility Mode on IIS 7
If you have administrative access to your IIS server, you can add new headers by following the instructions here: IIS 7.0: Add a Custom HTTP Response Header

The name you need to specify is "X-UA-Compatible" and the value is "IE=EmulateIE7" (without the quotes).

Setting Compatibility Mode on other platforms
If you can not use the above method for any reason, you can add compatibility mode to each page by adding the following meta tag:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />

[kgun]

Originally Posted by wige

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 is designed to be more standards compliant than previous versions. As a result, certain hacks in web sites can cause those sites to display incorrectly in Internet Explorer 8. This can be addressed by forcing browsers to render your site in what is called "compatibility mode". The following instructions detail how to enable compatibility mode site wide, if your site is hosted on an Apache server.

Setting Compatibility Mode for all visitors on Apache

Enabling compatibility mode on an Apache server requires the ability to create and edit .htaccess files, and mod_headers must be installed on the server. Most shared and dedicated hosting plans should allow this.

Simply add the following line to your .htaccess file.

Header set X-UA-Compatible "IE=EmulateIE7"

Natural questions:
1. Can that result in worse performance for some sites, or
2. Is it always a good rule to add that line to your .htaccess file?
3. More precisely, adding that code line has no negative side effects, it can do no harm?

Originally Posted by wige

Setting Compatibility Mode on other platforms
If you can not use the above method for any reason, you can add compatibility mode to each page by adding the following meta tag:
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />

Add it to each page? So you can not set it in robots.txt (since that is aimed at robots and not browsers)?

[wige]

Originally Posted by kgun

Natural questions:
1. Can that result in worse performance for some sites, or

Header set has no known issues as far as performance. There can be some issues where if you enter this line twice, where the second line may be ignored. However, this should only be set to a single value.

Originally Posted by kgun

2. Is it always a good rule to add that line to your .htaccess file?

No. Personally, I would only use it if the site needs to be forced into compatibility mode. Otherwise, the browser should be left to its own devices to determine rendering mode.

Originally Posted by kgun

3. More precisely, adding that code line has no negative side effects, it can do no harm?

I have seen none. The Header module for Apache is frequently used to send data (if you use PHP for example, it is used to send the version of PHP). Most requests have several headers that browsers ignore, most of which are version numbers. Most clients (Ok, all of them except IE will completely ignore this header.

Originally Posted by kgun

Add it to each page? So you can not set it in robots.txt (since that is aimed at robots and not browsers)?

No. Just the opposite. This is only meant for browsers, not for robots.

[dharrison]

Hi Wige

At the moment I am using:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />

in all my pages, which seems to be working (viewing using BrowserPool). The whole MSIE8 has given me a headache for months. Its weird how they offered it for download in Beta mode last year.

I have also read IEBlog : Compatibility View Improvements to come in IE8 which also demonstrates the compability mode that you were referring to (which in honesty wouldn't have been needed had Microsoft not been so arrogant!)

[Clint1]

"Subscribe to this thread" is no longer working on this thread. So I'm having to post to subscribe to it.

[dharrison]

I'm getting awful dejavu on this forum. I can swear we've all been here before