Using Internet Explorer 8’s Compatibility Button

23 March 2009 @ 12pm

Internet Explorer 8 is, by virtually all accounts, more standards compliant than its predecessor. However, if you’re browsing a site that displays improperly rendered tables, misaligned text or other formatting issues, you can easily switch back to Internet Explorer 7’s page rendering mechanism.

In the IE 8 toolbar, click on the small icon that looks like a page broken in half, next to the refresh button (pictured below). This invokes “Compatibility View,” which can fix some page rendering issues.

If the rendering problems affect too many sites and you’d like to downgrade to Internet Explorer 7, follow the instructions in this Microsoft Knowledge Base article.

If you are a Web developer whose page does not render properly under Internet Explorer 8, you may want to consider using the Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image, which will test your site for compatibility with IE 6, IE 7 and IE 8.

Tagged
Internet Explorer 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP