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I would like to force IE10 at the browser level (not from the server side) to go into IE9 mode.

I know that I can do this manually through the F12 developer tools in the desktop version of IE10. Is it possible to force a site to always be seen in IE9 mode in both the Metro and desktop versions of IE10?

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    Can you describe why you need to force a specific IE version (for given sites only) in client-side?
    – jsalonen
    Nov 7, 2012 at 20:19
  • We have a site that is not yet fully IE10 compatible and are blocking IE10 users. In the meantime, we have to support IE9 behavior, but if we're on Win8, we'll have to set compatibility mode every time. Nov 7, 2012 at 20:27
  • How are you "blocking" IE10 users? I mean you can just set preferred browser mode with meta tag to IE9 and the site should work just fine for IE10 as well.
    – jsalonen
    Nov 7, 2012 at 20:28
  • We're not there yet. Pushing changes to a production system are not something you just do when you support thousands of users. Nov 7, 2012 at 20:30
  • We're blocking users by detecting their browser and deciding whether to let them login or tell them that their browser is unsupported. Nov 7, 2012 at 20:33

2 Answers 2

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You can add your site to the compatibility view lists. Choose from menu "Tools" -> "Compatibility View settings" and in the popup dialog input your site.

Compatibility View settings dialog.

I've done it on the Windows 7, but I think that this solution applies to Windo

Solution found here: http://www.mydigitallife.info/force-ie8-to-load-and-display-websites-in-ie7-compatibility-view-mode/.

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    The problem with this is that it does IE10 Compatibility Mode. You can't force it to IE9 Standards Mode. Jira doesn't work properly in IE10 Compatibility mode but it does work properly in IE9 Standards mode.
    – Ronn Black
    Feb 28, 2013 at 23:14
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The best I can think if is forcing the browser to open in a specific mode by using a command-line option. Sadly, anything like this cannot be found from the "official" list of command-line options for IE. Also discussions on Technet also seem to imply that - at least on IE9 - you cannot permanently set document mode to a legacy setting.

Also I gotta say it puzzles me why you need to figure this out on client-side in the first place. I mean if you want to force IE10 users to use IE9 rendering mode then you just need to add an X-UA-Compatible meta tag with IE version at 9:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=9">

From MSDN Library:

In certain cases, it might be necessary to restrict the display of a webpage to a document mode supported by an earlier version of Internet Explorer. You can do this by serving the page with an x-ua-compatible header. For more info, see Specifying legacy document modes.

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  • Thanks, but I need a short-term client-side solution. Changing the server at the moment right now is not an option. Nov 7, 2012 at 20:38
  • I'm really sorry to tell you, but I suspect such a solution doesn't exist. In addition, I gotta say it is very puzzling that you are developing a website and cannot change the server-side code -- how on earth can you develop the site if you cannot change it?
    – jsalonen
    Nov 7, 2012 at 20:50
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    Given how surprised you are regarding our inablity to change production servers, I'm guessing that you haven't done enterprise-level development. When you're working on an enterprise system, changing ANYTHING is complicated. We have a test server that we can change no problem. We have a QA/certification server that we can change only after going through the test servers. Only after going through testing on both levels can we change prod. BUT those changes must be approved functionality before you even begin. It's just how it goes. We can change it, but a client-side solution would be simplest. Nov 7, 2012 at 21:26
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    We have to support production, not just test. I know that you want to do it a certain way, but if it were that easy, I would have done that and not asked the question in the first place. I did not ask on stackoverflow because I am not looking for a coding answer. Nov 7, 2012 at 22:09
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    Let me give you an example. A company I do work for has a number of partners/suppliers who all have their own systems my customer orders parts through. Some run through VPN's some go out over the internet. The BEST of them requires IE9 or older to run, the worst has custom software that requires 32bit XP to run. We do not control these servers and are forced to deal with inter-operating with them. A lot of these enterprise systems don't get updated until something breaks. Oct 3, 2013 at 13:15

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