Force "Internet Explorer 8" browser mode in intranet

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."

It is possible to override the compatibility mode in intranet. Just add the below code to the web.config. Worked for me with IE9.

<system.webServer>
<httpProtocol>
  <customHeaders>
    <clear />
    <add name="X-UA-Compatible" value="IE=edge" />
  </customHeaders>
</httpProtocol>

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

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:

Compatibility View and the Enterprise

A large number of line-of-business websites are Internet Explorer 7 capable today. In order to preserve compatibility, Internet Explorer 8 ships with smart defaults based on zone evaluation. In the default state, all sites on the public internet display in Internet Explorer 8 Standards mode (Compatibility View off) and all intranet websites display in Internet Explorer 7 Standards mode (Compatibility View on).

Let’s look at some examples. If you navigate to sites on your local intranet like http://myPortal and http://sharepoint/sites/mySite, Internet Explorer 8 identifies itself with a User Agent string of ‘7’, Version Vector of ‘7’, and displays webpages that trigger standards mode in Internet Explorer 7 Standards mode. This combination allows webpages that worked correctly in Internet Explorer 7 to continue to do so in IE8.

To override the Compatibility View settings for intranet or all websites you need to make IE8 emulate itself.

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE8" >