CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptasp.netinternet-explorer
paulmorriss
paulmorriss

Reputation: 2615

Resolving IE compatability issues seemingly caused by Microsoft's own software

We're using a third party content management system built on ASP.NET. The pages seem to display in IE9 mode on IE11. I used the MS IE10 compat inspector tool http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2012/01/20/ie10-compat-inspector.aspx to try and work out why the page is not displaying in IE10 or Edge mode. (The HTML5 feature that I'm trying to use should display in IE10 or 11.) The only warnings the tool gives are about Javascript which is using window.navigator to do browser sniffing.

The code that is using window.navigator is in a file called webresource.axd:

var __nonMSDOMBrowser = (window.navigator.appName.toLowerCase().indexOf('explorer') == -1);

which itself seems to be part of ASP.NET.

There are no javascript warnings or errors. Here's one of the pages: https://secure.wycliffe.org.uk/NetCommunity/SSLPage.aspx?pid=283. This is with IIS6 on Windows Server 2003.

Could this be the cause of the IE9 mode problem? (I have <!DOCTYPE html> at the top of the document.)

Is MS's own tool really complaining about bad practise in it's own software?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 259

Answers (1)

Olly Hodgson
Olly Hodgson

Reputation: 15803

Ah ha! It's because your server is sending the pages down with an X-UA-Compatible header, telling Internet Explorer to use IE9 mode.

To see it, open https://secure.wycliffe.org.uk/NetCommunity/SSLPage.aspx?pid=283 in IE10, and press F12 to bring up the developer tools. Switch to the Network tab, press Start and refresh the page. Once it's loaded, double-click on the first item, then switch to the Response Headers tab.

You should see a header in there: X-UA-Compatible: IE=9.

To force IE to use the latest rendering mode, go into the IIS configuration, find where it's being applied, and either remove it, or change it to a newer version, e.g. IE=10. Alternatively, IE=edge will always use the latest version's standards mode rendering engine. Be aware it's probably there for a reason, though! We've had to use that header in the past as a short-term workaround for IE10 issues in legacy .net applications.

See MSDN: Defining document compatibility for more information.

Upvotes: 1

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