Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

Geld lenen — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:33:41 GMT

Very useful. Personally I find the compatibility view not very handy because it didn't work a few times. I didn't know about the options given here though.

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

Hypotheekrente — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:49:22 GMT

What I don't like about the campatibility view is the time it takes to reload your site in the browser.

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

Ver Noss — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:04:36 GMT

Microsoft promised that pages would go into standards mode by default. Obviously, you have changed your mind. This is another example of Microsoft breaking its promise to support standards.

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

Quality Directory — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:26:38 GMT

Helpful tips! As a developer I know these behaviors you described here will benefit me a lot. But I'm worried about ordinary end-users who have no knowledge about how to make these tweaks. Many of them don't read blogs to learn how different IE8 is from IE7 and how it works.

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

Brian LePore — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:08:58 GMT

@Noss,

Microsoft's statement was that it would load Web sites in standards mode by default. This is the case. It loads intranet sites in IE7 mode by default. These are what Microsoft actually said. It may not be what many developers heard, but that is the truth.

One question I have for Microsoft is: When did the "Smart Defaults" setting for IE8 come in to play? I swear that this did not used to be the case as I remember sites I visited on localhost were coming out in compatibility view and then I'd need to turn to IE8, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore (and is in line with the article). Was this not the case at launch and requires a Windows Update for this behavior?

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

evan — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:22:28 GMT

The only thing that sucks with this is that the IE7 compatibility mode isn't exactly IE7.

Thus 2 new problems emerge.

1.) Developers now have to test on:

IE6, Native IE7, Faked IE7, & IE8

(4 IE browsers vs. the 2 they previously tested on (e.g. IE6, IE7)

2.) Even though the idea is to move towards standards (much approved) allowing access to broken legacy IE7 rendering "Holds back the Web" indefinitely. I sincerely hope that IE9 has NO SUCH compatibility option. Or worse yet has a 3-mode option... a.) IE7, b.) IE8 and c.) IE9

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

ShadowChaser — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:07:18 GMT

Evan, I think the IE7 compatibility mode does the opposite of what you say - it actually "moves the web forward".

Take a look at what happened with IE7's release - many large corporations (including mine, shamefully) still run IE6 for all users.

The reason is they have a large number of intranet applications they don't want to spend money fixing. IE8's defaults allow corporate machines to be upgraded, and allow internet sites to follow the latest standards.

Your own web stats prove this - something like 10-15% of users still run IE6, and most are in the corporate world.

I'd actually hope that IE9 includes an IE6 mode - we need to get these people upgraded and off of IE6 so we can start using modern standards.

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

Mike Morley — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:38:20 GMT

Why would you assume that "sites found on corporate intranets" expect “IE” to act like IE7?

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

EricLaw — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:47:51 GMT

@Brian LePore: This change was made for either Beta-2 or RC1; it definitely was done before RTM.

@Mike: Because we talked to hundreds of companies and got thousands of reports from users. Of course, as Scott noted, this is entirely under control of the user or GP Admin, so organizations that want Standards mode on their Intranet by default can easily configure it that way.

@ShadowChaser: Indeed, you're right. What many fail to realize is that if IE8 doesn't offer great compatibility, by default, with Intranet sites, then corporations will not roll it out, and then the Internet at large will not see the benefits of improved standards-compliance.

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

Helpful tips! Great information and direction for a standard.

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

Stifu — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:28:02 GMT

The compatibility list makes the "default" standards behavior useless, since in the end, the vast majority of users will stay in IE7 mode. So Microsoft's "change of heart" about enabling standards mode by default was no more than a PR stunt.

Sites will only show in standards mode if they're not in the compatibility list, or if they contain the IE8 meta tag... but otherwise, most users won't bother unchecking the compatibility check box, so I wouldn't count on it.

My site is currently on a free host, which also hosts thousands of other sites all sharing the same domain name. And the compatibility list being based on domain names rather than sub-domain names, that basically means my site will be on the compatibility list forever, since most of the other sites hosted there will never be standards compliant. In other words, the default behavior of IE8 only benefits standards-friendly sites hosted on their own little domain (and then again, they might still appear in the compatibility list by mistake), and they're a minority.

The conclusion is that you need to add the IE8 meta tag on your sites to be safe, which leaves us in the exact same situation as if Microsoft hadn't "changed its mind" about the default rendering mode of IE8. Only more confusing.

Evan: you're making it sound like IE8 doesn't already have 3 rendering modes... It does. Quirks (IE 5.5), Compatibility (IE 7) and Standards (IE 8).

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

Mike Morley — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:17:43 GMT

RE: "Why would you assume that "sites found on corporate intranets" expect “IE” to act like IE7?"

It seems strange to me that I create and test an application that is distributed on an intranet site, setting it to IE8 standards mode. Then these settings will be over written based on:

1. A user setting of a concept they are unlikely to understand or care about or

2. A blanket 'checkbox' to render ALL intranet sites in another mode. If I am building, testing and deploying surely I know best what mode the page should be rendered in!

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

boen_robot — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:31:49 GMT

@Mike Morley

If you explicitly set the X-UA-Compatible HTTP header or meta equivalent, it is YOUR settings that will be honored.

What those settings do is change IE8's behaviour *in the absence* of such an HTTP header or meta equivalent.

i.e. if "Display intranet sites in Compatability View" is checked (which it is by default) AND your page doesn't say explicitly the engine to be used, it's IE7 that will be used.

GET THE FACTS

Mike — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:35:53 GMT

sorry off topic but is this get the facts campaign for real.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/get-the-facts/browser-comparison.aspx

The browser comparison chart is the funniest. I know it is marketing but it really comes across as childish.

I will just quote two examples

Developer Tools--Of course Internet Explorer 8 wins this one. There's no need to install tools separately, and it offers better features like JavaScript profiling.

Ha Ha Ha, am I the only developer who hasn't stopped using firebug and now develops in IE8. Besides why is downloading the tool a bad thing, I don't think the average user needs to use web dev tools.

Web Standards--It's a tie. Internet Explorer 8 passes more of the World Wide Web Consortium's CSS 2.1 test cases than any other browser, but Firefox 3 has more support for some evolving standards.

Make your own minds up on that one.

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

Stifu — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:40:49 GMT

Mike: thanks for the laughs, I missed this.

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

Mike Morley — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:40:38 GMT

@boen_robot

Please correct me if I am wrong, but the situation is this.

I have set the meta tag to "IE=8" as I want the "Browser Mode" to be IE8 standards.

In: Tools > Compatibility View Settings, the default is "Display intranet sites in Compatibility View". It appears to me that this setting wins against my meta tag declaration, so regardless of my programming we are in compatibility mode and the user_agent is IE7.

If I turn off this checkbox (for all intranet sites, not a selected list) then it will follow my meta tag declaration.

I can see this causing real issues when deploying the application in company intranets.

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

James — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:52:45 GMT

I echo ShadowChaser's comments.

We build and support a business-to-business website. The last time we checked the stats we found that we have a surprisingly large number of users still running IE 6 (20%).

We're currently experiencing the same problem as this guy:

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.aspnet/browse_thread/thread/9f7fd62f5f069566?pli=1

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

Scott Dickens [MSFT] — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:01:09 GMT

@Mike Morley

The X-UA-Compatible tag does in fact "win" vs. Compatibility View on the client. http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/02/16/just-the-facts-recap-of-compatibility-view.aspx

There are two things that may be going on -

1. The X-UA-Compatible tag isn't taking affect because it isn't being used correctly. Double-check your syntax. Also, make sure that the tag is placed correctly. It must be included in the <HEAD> of the doc (assumes you aren't sending it down via HTTP header) AND it must come BEFORE tags like <script> and <link>. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288325(VS.85).aspx. The reason is somewhat sound - IE needs to finalize the document mode before evaluating any item that may behave differently depending upon the document mode (version). To check all this, load up your page. Open the DEV Toolbar (F12)to check the resulting document mode. Also from within the DEV Toolbar, View->Source->Original to check X-UA-Compatible tag placement.

2. You have code that's pivoting on the User Agent string. The X-UA-Compatible tag affects the Document Mode, e.g. IE8 Standards, IE7 Standards, Quirks. It can’t affect the UA string as it’s already too late to change that – the client’s already made the GET request to the server (and it contains a UA string). What this means is that if your site pivots on the User Agent string, adding just the X-UA-Compatible tag won’t make your website work as expected – you’ll also need to update your User Agent string detection logic as well.

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

Mike — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:13:06 GMT

Hello IE team,

I'm posting here because the official IE page has no way to contact.

My question is this: can you please remove or correct this page:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/get-the-facts/mythbusting.aspx

That page contains several lies, which is not a good way to 'inform' people. I'm looking forward to the corrections. Or do you support spreading such lies?

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

EricLaw — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:08:49 GMT

@Mike: The page you've cited debunks a number of common myths which exist about web browsers. Each of the points explains in detail why the claim is a myth.

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

AndyC — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:02:14 GMT

@evan: Why would you need to test in "faked IE7" mode? If the user has a browser capable of it, they're running IE8 in which case you can serve them standards compliant code and force the browser into IE8 mode.

The "fake IE7" is only there as a last ditch compatibility shim for pages that haven't yet been updated.

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

Christian — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 14:38:41 GMT

Is there any real-world example of a page that triggers this kind of automatic fallback into IE7 land?

How many such assertions that trigger fallback behavior are there in the IE8?

IE8, like any browser, will probably still have some bugs in its rendering engine. To me it's a scary idea, if those send the whole site into the past. A message what went wrong would be a lot more predictable and would ensure that things will be fixed, even if it is a little frustrating for visitors.

It's scary that sane behavior does not come by default and instead has to be ensured with a proprietary HTTP header. Could you please get together with other browser vendors and at least agree on one single HTTP header, like:

UA-Behavior=no-guessing

If this parameter is active, then User agents should just take the site seriously: no compatibility modes, no content sniffing, not any such stuff, where the browser tries to be smarter than the site. If such can't be the default behavior, then at least there should be a simple, cross-browser, version-independent way to opt in into the most reasonable and predictable client behavior that is available. For example, the HTML 5 WG could be a good place for agreeing on something like this (...that is, if MS where to take it seriously).

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

DT — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 02:25:09 GMT

I'm sorry, how can you consider putting temporary compatibility-set domains in parentheses to be anything approaching adequate?

Kindly consider at the very least displaying something like

(Temporary) viks.org

Even that isn't spectacularly user-friendly as people will not know what is meant by the entry being temporary, but it's better than completely unexplained arbitrary markings.

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

Dan — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:52:42 GMT

DT: Your tone leaves something to be desired.

They probably rightly consider it "more than adequate" considering that no normal human ever opens this dialog, and nearly no normal human ever encounters the sorts of of problems that lead to the temporary assignment of compatibility view in the first place.

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

DT — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:30:15 GMT

Is your implication supposed to be that all the abnormal humans read this blog so they'll know what it means if they ever come across it?

The only way in which an entry in a list clearly labelled as items the user themself has added which was actually added by the computer, which is wrapped in parentheses for no explained reason (and may be viewed to be the normal way for entries to appear, if there are no other entries in the list), can be considered "more than adequate", is if the only people who will ever see it are the people who designed it that way. Vaguely akin to what you said, but if that was the case then they wouldn't be going out of their way to tell us about it.

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

Jennifer — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:06:48 GMT

How do I set up IE8 so that files opened from my localhost / 127.100.0.0 / 192.168.100.x / myservername

open in IE8 in standards mode (BUT!!!) Also show me the compatibility mode button. For testing pages it is really annoying to have to use the slow developer toolbar to make this switch and more importantly there is no VISUAL indication which mode I'm in.

thanks

re: Compatibility View and "Smart Defaults"

Marakra — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:51:54 GMT

how I know that in large companies still stands 6 version of your browser and it will not hinder