Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is set to be part of Windows Update in the coming weeks. For most people, that means an automatic upgrade from Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), probably not really noticing much difference.
So what’s to be prepared about? IE8 is more ’standards compliant’ than previous versions, meaning that your website may not look or even work exactly as you intend in the new browser! To update a web-site’s design to be standards compliant can be time consuming, especially seen as you may have only just got through updating to support IE7!!
Microsoft thought about this and so offers the ability to select a version of internet explorer that your site supports.
By default, the browser will be in “Internet Explorer 8 Standards” mode. For non-compatible sites, users will see a broken page icon in the address bar. Clicking on this will allow them to change the compatibility to Internet Explorer 7, for example. You don’t want your site visitors to have to do this, so as a site owner, you can specify what you support.
This is done with a meta tag, in the head of your web pages. The following will set a page to render in IE8, the same as it would in IE7:
<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=EmulateIE7″>
That’s it!
Full details on other possible document compatibility values can be found at MSDN – Defining Document Compatibility
The Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit also highlights other features to be aware of as a developer. It makes interesting reading.
