Introducing Compatibility View

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Now Available

IEBlog — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:16:20 GMT

We’re excited to release IE8 Beta 2 today for public download. You can find it at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8

Public beta 2 of Internet Explorer 8 is now available!

Expression Web team blog — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:42:12 GMT

A public BETA of Internet Explorer 8 is now available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8 . 

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Now Available

No1 Microsoft Fan — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:51:06 GMT

We’re excited to release IE8 Beta 2 today for public download. You can find it at http://www.microsoft

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Sander — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:11:43 GMT

Have you considered the insanity this will cause when a website is developed on the local 'intranet' (where most development servers live) and then deployed to the live website?

A Comprehensive Look at Internet Explorer Beta 2

The Windows Experience Blog — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:21:28 GMT

Today, the Internet Explorer Team has made available Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 for all to download.

Public beta 2 of Internet Explorer 8 is now available!

Mirrored Blogs — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:30:44 GMT

A public BETA of Internet Explorer 8 is now available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8 . 

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Richard Fink — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:52:35 GMT

I'll keep an open mind about this feature until I personally experience it with IE8, but this seems like a confuser for sure.

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Samiq — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:01:48 GMT

pingback from http://bits.samiq.net

[... for this Microsoft has enabled a way for site owners to specify the type of treatment they want their sites to have. Specifically, the type of engine used to render their content, also known as the Compatibility View

...

After downloading and installing aggiorno express, getting your sites ready for IE8 is as easy as launching the application, selecting the source folder of your web site, deciding where the new web site should be stored, choosing the flag you want to meta tag your pages with and hitting Start!

... ]

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Excuse Me? — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:04:28 GMT

Why is BROKEN-DOM and BROKEN-CSS turned on by default for IntrAnet sites? ("a")

Of all the sites that get fixed pronto, this is the top of the list.

Thanks for holding back the web again.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Now Available

Me about things... — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:11:22 GMT

It was announced some time ago and right on time the IE team released the second beta of Internet Explorer

re: Introducing Compatibility View

hypotheekrente — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:22:38 GMT

Congratz for Public beta 2! We as MS lovers appreciate it!

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Now Available

New Zealand IE8 Taskforce — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:30:35 GMT

We’re excited to release IE8 Beta 2 today for public download. You can find it at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Johnathan — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:38:44 GMT

I had to laugh at the IE8 download page.. listed under "features" was "Compatability Mode".

So, basically, the fact that IE was "Broken", is now a "Feature" in IE8?

nice.

re: Introducing Compatibility View

wu — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:44:55 GMT

Can you make InPrivate open in a new tabs.

Kinda annoying that when using a inprivate mode it opens in a new IE windows.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Launched Today: Immediate Website Updates Required for Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Compatibility

Microsoft on ISVs — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:02:16 GMT

Today, Microsoft released Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 in English, German, Simplified Chinese,

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 är nu tillgänglig

Robert Folkesson — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:37:29 GMT

Du kan ladda hem och installera den här . Har du Beta1 installerad måste den först avinstalleras, kör

re: Introducing Compatibility View

AC — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 02:52:42 GMT

I see a problem with this approach:

1. People get a bunch of broken sites.

2. People decide to give up and use compatibility mode for everything.

3. Standards-compliant sites are forced to use your meta tag just to be displayed correctly by these users.

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Xander — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 03:22:26 GMT

First up, congrats on the b2 release, here's hoping that testing proves it to be worth the wait. :-)

Ok... now can someone tell me who thought it was a good UI design idea to deliberately put (move) the IE7 "Compatibility Mode" button to BETWEEN THE ADDRESS BAR AND THE REFRESH BUTTON??

Seriously...?

불안을 줄여줄 Internet Explorer 8 베타2!

bkchung's WebLog — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 06:00:59 GMT

Windows Internet Explorer 8 Home page (홈페이지) Internet Explorer 8: Worldwide sites (다운로드) Internet Explorer

re: Introducing Compatibility View

LD — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 06:11:48 GMT

This is leaps and bounds above IE7 feature-wise, but I'm not convinced that it's fully CSS 2.1 compliant (yet). I hope that work is still in progress.

Maybe I'm looking at this through the wrong lenses, but Firefox 2+ and Safari 3 render a number of sites with nearly identical precision. The same sites in IE8 standards mode look like they were rendered in IE7 when it attempted to render in standards mode. And in this case, I know we're not dealing with poorly structured conditional comments or server controlled CSS files.

The last thing we need is another version of IE on the market that designers have to specially code for because it interprets compliance differently from everyone else.

Can you guys speak to the progress of CSS 2.1 compliance in IE8 beta 2?

re: Introducing Compatibility View

F C — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:20:03 GMT

What happened with the FEATURE_NATIVE_DOCUMENT_MODE registry key which was controlling the web browser control mode? It looks like it is not used anymore ... Did you add a web browser control interface to control the rendering mode?

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Koby Kahane — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:44:25 GMT

So much for "standards compliant by default"...

As others have observed, the different default behavior between the Intranet and Internet zones is likely to cause a great deal of confusion. Let corporations opt in to Intranet Compatibility Mode with a GPO as needed rather than holding back the Web.

IE8 beta2

Weblogul lui Zoli — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:40:41 GMT

Se poate descărca . Dacă v-ați jucat cu beta1, trebuie să-l dezinstalați. Detalii aici . Tudor ne povestește

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Vasil Dinkov — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:32:45 GMT

OK, thanks for all the hard work! Please keep it up!

I hope this is not the final version of Trident that will ship with IE8.0 final as I noticed quite many bugs.

I am not going to report them all as I don't have access to a decent bug reporting tool but here's one very simple - document.documentElement.clientWidth/Height differs in IE8 mode and in Compatibility View mode (of course, it is incorrect in IE8 mode, that's why I am reporting it).

Check out this simple test case if you like:

http://files.myopera.com/smartmenus/files/bugs/bug-ie8beta2-docelm-props.html

re: Introducing Compatibility View

ליאור וול — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:11:01 GMT

hey, why not incloude IE6 mode also in Developer Toolbar and make web developers lifes much better?

p.s

"Browser Mode" and "Document Mode" looks the same to me, i think they should be marged.

and another thing...

ליאור וול — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:14:35 GMT

does IE8 have something like *css (IE7) or _css (IE6)

(for example _border:1px;*border:2px; etc.)

thanks

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Jean-Philippe — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:31:50 GMT

I'm a Firefox user but I congratulate the IE team for their efforts to make the transition to a more standards Web the least painful possible. I understand that it cannot be done with a yes/no approach since there is so many sites made to work on IE6 only. So I'm eager to see this new version deployed and what will come for the next IE versions too. Good work.

Apache httpd configuration for IE7 standard mode rendering in IE8

Hanu Kommalapati's blog — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:36:19 GMT

(Note: The following instructions are for information purpose only and correspond to Apache 2.2 on Windows.

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Richard Fink — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:53:30 GMT

The compatibility mode button is a gutsy maneuver, I understand the reasons for it and I give you credit.

But many will find the rules as to when the button pops up confusing and/or inconvenient.

This needs some clarification to answer the question: "What do I, as a page author, need to do to keep the compatibility mode button from popping up."

For example, this makes my brain twirl a little:

"A large number of line-of-business websites are Internet Explorer 7 capable today. In order to preserve compatibility, Internet Explorer 8 ships with smart defaults based on zone evaluation. In the default state, all sites on the public internet display in Internet Explorer 8 Standards mode (Compatibility View off) and all intranet websites display in Internet Explorer 7 Standards mode (Compatibility View on)."

So what exactly does that mean?

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Mike — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:26:33 GMT

Much as I dislike this I can see some valid reasons for it but shouldn't the behaviour be to switch to IE6 mode rather than IE7?

One of the main reasons IE7 take-up has been so slow within corporations is because many 'enterprise' and intranet apps only work properly in IE6.

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Will Peavy — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:36:35 GMT

@LD - IE8b2 passes Acid 2 (http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html#top). Default padding/margins for elements is not defined in the CSS spec, and are assigned by browser manufacturers - this may account for differences you are seeing. If you build sites, are you using CSS reset rules to set margins/padding the same across browsers?

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Calum — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:40:12 GMT

NO! You have completely broken the UI! Keep the improvements, like:

-Position of Refresh/Stop buttons

-Search/Address suggestions

but make it look like IE7! Add icons for EVERY toolbar button! Get rid of the stupid toolbar colour!

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Chris — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:49:48 GMT

Shouldn't there be some sort of visual indication that a tab is in compatibility mode?

Maybe change the colour or add an icon.

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Scott Dickens [MSFT] — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:01:56 GMT

@ F C

FEATURE_NATIVE_DOCUMENT_MODE has been replaced by FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION]

“iexplore.exe” = dword:8

(possible values of 7 or 8)

re: Introducing Compatibility View

LD — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:10:16 GMT

@Will

Yes, generally we do use resets. But one thing I've noticed that may or may not be related is alignment. I've seen more than a handful of sites that are centered on screen in Firefox, Safari, IE7, and IE6 that are left aligned in IE8. I'm not completely sure what would cause that.

Consumers Begin Using Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2

US ISV Developer Evangelism Team — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:17:56 GMT

The next beta for Internet Explorer has been released for broad distribution to the public, according

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Tim Hettler — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:15:44 GMT

I understand that including the IE6 engine for normal users might be prohibitive because of the weight it would add to the program, but releasing a "developer" version of IE8 that included the IE6 rendering engine would be a huge boon for developers.

IE8b2 is more compatible than any older version

Jacques — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:01:42 GMT

It's the first release of Internet Explorer in a decade that I can't find anything to say against it.

IE8 is the first version being compatible with the Internet without requiring extensive rewrites or hacks.

Thank you for making IE8 standards-based.

re: Introducing Compatibility View

BradC — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:07:35 GMT

Compatibility View is a good feature. But please don't enable it by default on intranet sites. Standards compliant mode should be the default everywhere. The inconsistencies caused by defaulting to compatibility view mode in the intranet and standards mode elsewhere will cause a lot of confusion.

Also, the button for enabling compatibility mode should NOT go between the address bar and the refresh button. That is going to confuse users into thinking it IS the refresh button.

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Jacques — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 01:04:22 GMT

When using a proper Doctype declaration, I love the fact that IE does not try display the compatibility button at all. Which is very good for us doing both intranet and Internet sites.

Thank you again for not trying to reinvent the wheel.

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Kirill Tropin — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:15:48 GMT

That's really cool feature, and I've tried it a little bit on the "acid2 test".

In IE8 mode it works fine. When I press compatibility mode button - it looks like in IE7. But when I unpress button it doesn't come back to the full IE8 view.

It looks like this: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3127/2808529696_6609d6f18b_o.png

After refresh it works fine.

Hope this help make IE better )

And what about acid3 test? http://acid3.acidtests.org/

With IE8 it works much more better then with IE7, but still not pass it..

re: Strict HTML not Rendered Correctly Outside Compatibility View

Jonathan Edwards — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:46:21 GMT

This website (http://www.hurricanezone.net) validates at w3.org as XHTML 1.0 Strict, yet IE8 displays the Compatibility button and does not render the pages correctly unless you enable Compatibility View. Firefox 3 and Safari 3 agree on how these pages should render (so did IE7, for that matter).

The question I would have is why would IE8 not recognize the validation and handle the strict code, if it is standards compliant?

COMPLETELY ACCEPTABLE

JAB Creations — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 21:51:02 GMT

While the ability to almost instantly switch between IE7 and IE8 without having to close the browser tab/window is grand indeed it is ****COMPLETELY**** unacceptable to have IE7 as the default rendering engine for localhost. *THAT* is what has angered a lot of people and I have read brought criticisms from Opera. I have to agree, this default essentially negates all the hard work you folks have been doing to make IE8 render CSS properly.

You guys are capable of 180's, let's see localhost default to IE8's desired/standards compliant rendering mode for Beta 3. This completely overshadows all the work that has been done thus far...

Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image

ASPInsiders — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:46:48 GMT

Do you want to try Internet Explorer 8 beta 2? Or do you want to test your website with XP and Internet

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Brian Smith — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 20:18:33 GMT

1. What is the "user list" that you are refering to?

2. You say that the Compatibilkity View button is hidden With X-UA-Compatible: IE=EmulateIE8. Is it hidden or disabled?

3. What happens for other values of X-UA-Compatible, for example X-UA-Compatible: IE=100? I would expect the Compatibility View button to be disabled in that case too.

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Andreas L — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 00:50:26 GMT

How is this possible? You are failing yet AGAIN!

COME ON!!! Seriously! You can't be this stupid!

re: Introducing Compatibility View

James — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 07:04:22 GMT

Wading through the MS marketing pingbacks I see some interesting comments..

I'm interested if you've ever heard of reducing complexity to solve a problem rather than introducing new features to try and solve a problem? What happens when IE9 comes along - two sets of configuration rules? two broken page buttons? double the testing costs ?

Wouldn't it just be simpler to say to those out there who develop for only one browser "hey, here's a beta of our new browser, test your site, if you can't update your code, stick this hack meta tag in and you'll be happy forever".

IE 8's "Please Break My Website" Button

Hacking for Christ — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:04:17 GMT

So instead of standards-compliant websites needing to include an extra <meta> tag to tell IE 8 to render in standards mode, they now need to include an extra <meta> tag to tell IE 8 not to show a "please break my website" button in the chrome.

re: Introducing Compatibility View

Ian Boyd — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:58:28 GMT

Very nice.

Could we have an way to see what rendering mode ie is in? A status bar section that lights up perhaps if it's in anything but the latest standard mode, and an indicator of why (page quirks mode, page standards mode, page standards but user override to compatibility, etc)

Or the properties of the page that show rendering mode, in addition to Protocol, Type, Connection, Address, Type.

[JRA-15499] ie 7/8 didn't show Fields on configured screens (tab)

JIRA: JIRA — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:25:19 GMT

Hello, This problem will only occur if you are viewing JIRA using IE8 in compatibility view. Please see this page for more details on IE8 compatibility view: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/08/27/introducing-compatibility-view.aspx When...

re: Introducing Compatibility View

pete — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:41:09 GMT

As near as I can tell, there is no way to tell IE8 to simply _always_ use the standards mode by default. Barring the use of the "meta" element described, as near as I can tell you either get compatibility mode (if there is no DOCTYPE) or standards mode (if there is one).

As a user, I would like IE8 configured to always be in standards mode, even if there's no DOCTYPE. If the site looks wrong, I can always push the button.

Except that, oops...the button doesn't seem to show up if you've got a DOCTYPE. So fix that too.

Microsoft CSS Vendor Extensions

IEBlog — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 03:29:37 GMT

As you may know, all browsers have a set of CSS features that are either considered a vendor extension

GET RID OF COMPATIBILITY VIEW

Craig M — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:54:08 GMT

Compatibility view, and its predecessors are a big part of the reason so many sites still *need* a compatibility view. Compatibility mode in IE makes web site developers and other browser developers work around the deficiencies of the various IE rendering engines.

And since IE7 has a compatibility mode for IE6, that means that even if EVERYONE in the world updated to 7, or 8, developers still have to write around the garbage HTML renderer in IE6.

The only people this helps are the lazy or cheap ones that won't update their sites. It's holding back progress because every browser has to focus energy on rendering bad code in the same way IE does.

You don't see this in other coding environments. If I write bad C# code, the compiler fails or the code doesn't do what I want. Why should HTML be any different? It's a language like any other, and has rules, that people never bother to learn because browsers like IE make it so they don't have to.

And it's clear from the article that "site that worked correctly in Internet Explorer 7" is code for "broken, poorly written site," otherwise, of COURSE it would work correctly in IE8.

Stop building in compatibility modes!

The IE8 IEAK

IEBlog — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 21:27:04 GMT

Hi, my name is Jatinder Mann and I work on the Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) and Group

IE 8 Compatibility - Meta Tags, Http Headers, User Agent Strings etc etc

Mike Ormond's Blog — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 11:46:12 GMT

I've been wrestling with this for a little while now and wanted to try and get down some thoughts so

Internet Explorer 8 и IEAK

Блог команды разработчиков Internet Explorer 8 — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:04:46 GMT

Добрый день, меня зовут Ятиндер Манн (Jatinder Mann) и я работаю над Internet Explorer Administration

Customising IE8 to Drive Users to Your Website

Nigel Parker's Outside Line — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:40:09 GMT

I have been running IE8 as my default browser since Beta 2 was released a few months ago and I have been

Compatibility View Improvements to come in IE8

IEBlog — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 03:35:15 GMT

The next public update of IE8 (for Windows Vista- and Windows XP-based operating systems as well as the

Microsoft Internet Explorer ou l'inflation dans la

da scritch net works — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:55:29 GMT

Je ne sais pas comment ils font. Malgré tous leurs efforts pour rendre leur navigateur acceptable, ils arrivent à faire en sorte de devoir reprendre tous les anciens sites pour qu'ils fonctionnent comme avant.

The Internet Explorer 8 User-Agent String (Updated Edition)

IEBlog — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 23:18:32 GMT

As announced in February 2008 , Internet Explorer 8 sends an updated user-agent string when interacting

Overview of Platform Improvements in IE8 RC1

IEBlog — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:40:56 GMT

This is one of my favorite times in the product cycle. IE8 is platform complete and as we get closer

Will this be the biggest feature of IE8?

Ian Blackburn — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:39:20 GMT

Will this be the biggest feature of IE8?

Compatibility List FAQ

IEBlog — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 01:29:48 GMT

A few weeks back, we announced Compatibility View improvements available in the Release Candidate build

I found a web page that doesn't work, now what?

IEBlog — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 07:22:50 GMT

We’ve previously blogged about Compatibility View ; this post is a follow-up on compatibility and Internet

Just The Facts: Recap of Compatibility View

IEBlog — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:23:17 GMT

We’ve said a lot about our approach to website compatibility in general and the Compatibility View feature

Än är det inte försent

En webbplats på svenska om webbstandard — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 02:53:00 GMT

Insåg idag att "standards mode" i MSIE8 antagligen kommer att bli en intressant upplevelse för en hel del av oss därute i verkligheten, just för att den är så hårt fokuserad på att följa standard !Paradoxen det här handlar om...

More IE8 facts

Maria's blog in Bangladesh — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:05:28 GMT