Andy Jarrett: Detect IE8 Compatibility Mode

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Detect IE8 Compatibility Mode

I have recently had a client who complained to me that the site was broken in IE8 even though I had already checked it out. It turns out the issue was M$'s great "Compatibility Mode"

I know my way around CSS well enough but it felt wrong making any changes to keep this IE only mode happy when all other browsers were not complaining. Bing! I had an idea and went to Google and found this document on Defining Document Compatibility.

Turns out I can force the users browser to IE8 mode with the following

view plain print about

1<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE8" >

Hopefully this will help some other developer with their designing woes.

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Posted By Aaron Terry @ 7/28/10 2:00 AM

Just implemented this myself last week. That meta tag has to be declared before any script tags in the HTML head.

When using CFFORM on a template, Coldfusion 8 (not sure about other versions) injects the cfform.js file at the beginning of the HTML head. This prevents the meta tag from functioning.

So, I used the HTTP Header method .... like so:
<cfheader name = "X-UA-Compatible" value = "IE=Edge">

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