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Force IE compatability mode via URL string?


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Not sure at all if this is the right place for this post, but it seemed the most applicable spot. Mods, please move this thread if it is more appropriate elsewhere.

 

OK - We've got a client that's using - as far as I can tell - exclusively IE11 and has been running into an issue where IE is apparently deleting the contents of the 'Compatibility View Settings' when the browser is closed and/or the browsing history is cleared. According to the research I've done, this was a design decision by Microsoft when they updated IE to only display the 'broken page' icon when the browser thinks the page is broken (regardless IE's actual ability to correctly parse the page) and is fairly well documented in several different places on the Interwebs.

 

So, I know the issue, and I know that adding an "X-UA-Compatible" meta-tag in the target page's HTML should take care of the problem. The issue I'm having is this - we're redoing the site. Unfortunately, we're not redoing the pages that are causing the current problem, and the client has talked with someone who made mention of (rough quote here) 'a small bit of code that could be added to the link' that would force IE to render in compatibility mode.

 

I'm assuming the client's source is talking about the meta-tag in the link target page, and I haven't found anything in my Google searches to discount that theory, but I thought I'd ask here before I spoke with them about it in case I'm wrong.

 

Is there a flag that I can simply append to the URL that IE will parse and force a specific release-compatible view? Or really any way to force IE to render a webpage to a certain version that doesn't entail messing up the display to every other browser ever made or modifying the rendered page's source HTML?

As far as I know, no there is nothing that you can append to the URL that will toggle the compatibility mode, only the meta tag / header.

 

That said, you could designate your own URL switch that will cause your application to output the appropriate meta tag only if present. That might be what was being mentioned.

You output or omit the meta element depending on whether or not a certain URL parameter is present. For example:

https://yoursite.com/some_page?compat=1

This would trigger the meta element. But this URL wouldn't:

https://yoursite.com/some_page
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