Compatibility View

Updated: 11/16/2019 by Computer Hope

Compatibility view is a feature introduced with Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0. It enables the browser to enter a mode that supports pages that may not have all the latest browser features. Enabling this view sets features back to Internet Explorer 7 and fixes issues, such as misaligned text, images, or text boxes, issues with scripts, and some crash situations.

Internet Explorer Compatibility

Above is a picture and an example of how to enable this mode. As shown, clicking the broken green page switches between compatibility view and non-compatibility view.

To remove compatibility view on your website do either of the following solutions.

Add the below meta tag to each of your pages. This tag must be placed before any other meta tags for it to work.

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7">

To make this change throughout your site without editing every page, edit your .htaccess file and add the following lines into that file.

# Emulate IE7 to prevent compatibility view
BrowserMatch "^.*MSIE 8.*$" emulate_ie7
Header set X-UA-Compatible "IE=EmulateIE7" env=emulate_ie7

Internet Explorer, Internet terms