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Q: Eric, you mentioned that the IE8 Web Browser Control, hosted in Forms / WPF, runs in IE7 emulation mode by default. Is there a way to turn the emulation mode off and have the control work in "real" IE8 mode?
A: Yes. This is controlled by a feature control key. See Matt Crowley's post on Rendering Mode for WebOCs over on the IEBlog.
And, of course, implementing this with a reg key is terrible. As others have said, this should be done with CoInternetSetFeatureEnabled.