IE 11 - Is there a way to check then enable / disable enterprise mode?

Question

I am out of wit as how to solve this problem in Javascript or HTML. I have customers currently using web applications built for ie9 and under. These legacy applications do not work well on IE11. IT solutions was to enable enterprises mode. Enterprises mode was designed to avoid "common compatibility problems associated with web apps written and tested on older versions of Internet Explorer".

See: http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/43972-ie11-enterprise-mode-enable-disable-users.html

Enabling enterprises mode appear to be problematic on web application written using Bootstrap and AngularJS. Ie, responsive does not work at all unless enterprises mode is disabled. Not just AngularJS and Bootstrap but other libraries as well.

The solution that I am looking for is a way to check the status of enterprises mode via javascript, then tell the users to either enable / disable the mode. Better, if it can be turn off / on automatically via JS or HTML attributes.

Snooping in the document.x and window.x objects, I do not see any properties that we would give me an indication that enterprises mode is enable. Any suggestion?

Repro(s):

• IE11 > Developer Tool > Console > Type window
• IE11 > Developer Tool > Console > Type document

Answer 1

There is no DOM property that indicates that you're running EMIE. The whole idea of EMIE is to emulate IE8 behavior better than the IE8 document mode emulates IE8 behavior. EMIE should only be used in specific cases where it's needed; it should not be used wholesale.

It is possible to detect EMIE in certain cases. If you look carefully at the list of user-agent strings over the last couple of releases, there's a noticeable difference between EMIE on IE11 and the user agent string for IE11 RTM.

However, before you take that as your magic bullet, there are two caveats:

1. You cannot disable EMIE programmatically. It's a local configuration change only.

2. The user agent for IE11 is completely different today than it was when IE11 was released. Based on reports from the IE team, the UA string is going to be even more complicated, especially once "IE Spartan" (or whatever they choose to call it") hits the wire.

My recommendation? Create a small launcher page that does a simple feature detection for the web app in question. If you detect features consistent with what's needed for the app, then display a link to launch the app. If feature detection fails to detect IE8, IE11, or whatever version you've targeted, display a warning with a link to more troubleshooting information. Be sure to include a launch link anyway, just in case.

This way, the user has the information they need and you have a lightweight way of handling the issue, one that doesn't require too many updates to the app in question.

Hope this helps...

-- Lance