Using The Emulate IE7 Button

For the Internet Explorer 8 Beta, we’ve added an Emulate IE7 button to the command bar. It will help you with everyday browsing and with quickly checking your site as you work on it.

Everyday Browsing

If you’re having trouble on a site that you’d like to browse, try the Emulate IE7 button. This causes IE8 to use the IE7 user agent string, version vector and layout modes. Also, we’re interested in webpage problems so report them using the IE8 Beta Feedback tools.

Developer configurations

When you’re working on your pages, the combination of the Emulate IE7 button and the Developer Toolbar opens up a few more options for you.

The starting options are:

• Default: Internet Explorer reports the IE8 user agent string and use the IE8 layout modes
• Emulate IE7 pressed: Internet Explorer reports the IE7 user agent string and uses the IE7 layout modes

Once you get the user agent string reporting the way you like, you can use the IE8 developer tools to force IE’s layout mode to Quirks, IE7 Standards or IE8 Standards.

Paul Cutsinger
Lead Program Manager
User Experience