A: 

Turns out the only thing that affects this is indeed the <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7"> tag.

Note from the MSDN page on document compatability: This tag must appear in the <head> section of your code before any other tags except the <title> tag.

Andrew Song
[This][1] is another useful SO question. [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/897409/ie8-compatibility-view-button-is-enabled-even-when-ieemulateie7
Andrew Song