There are "Internet Explorer 8", "Internet Explorer 8 Compatibility Mode", and IE7 mode in IE8.
However, the default setting in IE make all intranet website use "IE8 Compatibility Mode" even I have setted doctype, the meta tag, http header as suggested to force it into IE8 mode.
I have
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
and
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" >
But it still goes into "IE8 Compatibility Mode", without any changes in IE setting.
How to force it into pure "IE8" mode, without change any browser's setting?
PS. I am not talking "document mode" here.
I found the answers here hard to follow, so here's the important information in a nutshell:
If your intranet uses default settings for IE, IE7 Standards Mode is enforced for intranet sites regardless of any website settings.
From this:
You'll have to make some adjustments to IE.
Here they are.....
In Internet Options / Local Intranet / Sites
Under : Local Intranet inside Sites, uncheck "Automatically detect intranet network".
Then select only "Include all network paths (UNCs)
See attached screenshots
It is possible to override the compatibility mode in intranet. Just add the below code to the web.config. Worked for me with IE9.
In order for the META declaration to work, the doctype has to be the simplified version:
Not the longer statement in Dennis' question.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\BrowserEmulation IntranetCompatibilityMode 1-->0
Seem that MSFT has not consider a large intranet environment that we have many different web application running inside.
There is no way to bypass the IE8 setting, according to somewhere I read on MSDN forum.
So, I will have to beg my system administrators to put some new group policies to change "Compatibility View" setting and the value and prevent user change the value, until MSFT discover this bug and fix it.
From an MSDN blog post (emphasis theirs): "Browser Mode is chosen before IE requests web content. This means that sites cannot choose a Browser Mode."