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Is there a way to force a page in IE8 to render in IE7 quirks mode or IE8 Compat View Quirks Mode?

Answer 1

+1 A:

Quirks mode is used to refer to the rendering you get when you don't specify a doctype (or you specify a really old doctype, see the table at Wikipedia's article on the topic). That rendering is based on IE5 (or 5.5, I forget which one). That is unchanged between IE7 and IE8.

If you are experiencing different behavior in IE8 when it's rendering the document in IE7 or quirks mode, then this suggests the issue is related to version checks - because that's what the Browser Mode controls. If your version checks don't treat IE8 differently than IE7, and the document mode is IE7 or quirks mode, then you're not supposed to see any differences.

Michael Madsen 2010-06-09 19:33:58

@Michael Thanks for your response. Both IE8 and IE7 browser modes both treat the document as "Quirks Mode." However, the problem is that they *are* working differently.

Ben McCormack 2010-06-09 19:43:53

@Ben: Then you should start by reviewing any version checking logic you have in scripts, both on the server and on the client. I don't expect jQuery to be the problem, but if you use any other scripts or frameworks, especially if they have not been updated recently, then one of them is most likely treating IE7 differently than IE8, and that this causes the problem. This applies to *any* bug that goes away by just changing the browser mode, but having the same rendering mode: it is practically guaranteed to be a version check gone wrong.

Michael Madsen 2010-06-09 20:22:10

Answer 2

+1 A:

When a browser is in Quirks mode you can't expect anything good from it. Make your code compliant with the html standard so that the browser goes into standards mode and then you can start looking at your javascript problem.

ZippyV 2010-06-09 19:34:18

Answer 3

A:

I am hitting this same issue, and I've found that there is a behavior difference between IE7 and IE8 browser mode that is not caused by version checking. When the content you are trying to load into an innerHTML includes a DOCTYPE, in IE8 browser mode, the content inside tables will not be displayed, but it will in IE7 and in IE7 mode (all of this applies only to quirks mode for the document mode). The following HTML sample demonstrates the problem (the text "Inside Table" does not display in IE8 browser mode):

<html>
    <head>
        <title>DOCTYPE Browser mode test</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <div id="content">Original Content</div>

        <button type="button" onclick="document.getElementById('content').innerHTML = '<!DOCTYPE>Outside table <table>Inside Table</table>';">Change Content!</button>
    </body>
</html>

Unfortunately I have not found a way to get quirks mode with IE7 browser mode. You can work around the issue by doing something like "document.getElementById('content').innerHTML = document.getElementById('content').innerHTML", because the DOCTYPE and other extraneous pieces have been parsed out, so resetting it causes the tables to display again.

jrduncans 2010-09-28 15:57:56

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Is there a way to force a page in IE8 to render in IE7 quirks mode or IE8 Compat View Quirks Mode?

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