Force Browser and Document Mode to ie9 in ie10

Question

This code:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=9" />

seems to only change document to ie9 and not browser. Any ideas other than hitting F12 and changing it manually?

Answer 1

A site can not set the Browser mode. The browser mode is chosen before the browser requests content from the site. This specifies how the browser is identified to the site, such as the UA string.

As you mentioned, the Document mode can be set by the author by including a X-UA-Compatible meta element, or by the DOCTYPE used. This overrides the default set by the browser for that browser mode.

Changing the Browser Mode is only useful for using IE to test how an earlier version of IE would handle the site. You can change it on your local machine (but not for the site as a whole) by changing it in the F12 tool.

The user (and thus developer) can change the Browser mode by clicking on the Compatibility View icon in the URL field. This will also be only for that machine, and not for all users.

The only way to change the Browser mode globally is to get the site added to MS’ Compat View List. But you don’t want that unless the site uses a ton of old MS vendor specific code, and will not be updated.

You can read more at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/10/19/testing-sites-with-browser-mode-vs-doc-mode.aspx

Answer 2

Optionally, you can alter the Web.config file to accomplish this as well. (You'll have to restart the service after publishing to see the changes.)

<system.webServer>
    <httpProtocol>
      <customHeaders>
        <add name="X-UA-Compatible" value="IE=Edge" />
      </customHeaders>
    </httpProtocol>
</system.webServer>