How can I open Internet Explorer 9 in IE7 mode by default?

Question

I want to set my IE to always open in IE7 mode.

I mostly develop in Chrome, and for purposes of efficiency and 80/20 principle, I assume that IE9 looks and behaves mostly like Chrome.

And I assume that if something looks and works decent enough in IE7, most of the time IE8 will be fine.

So I just want my Internet Explorer to always open as version 7 without me having to change it in the developer panel.

This will also be useful for my Selenium WebDriver functional tests that I want to run in IE7.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

could these meta tags work for you?

<!-- Force IE9 to IE8 compatibility mode -->
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />
<!-- Force IE9 to IE7 compatibility mode -->
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" />

Answer 2

I just found http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/internet-explorer-google-chrome-tab/ and it seems to open in IE7 mode by default.

There is still the caveat (of course) that this fake IE7 isn't the same as a native install of IE7. But this might be a decent trade-off.