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IE11 on Windows 8.1 - Google Search loads in legacy mode

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Re: IE11 on Windows 8.1 - Google Search loads in legacy mode

#4
post #3
post #2

This seems to solve it: IE11 -> Tools -> Compatibility View Settings. Remove check on "Use Microsoft Compatibility lists".

but what is this setting ? it doesn't look like an UA switcher.

Compatibility view essentially switches the entire rendering stack & user agent. It even looks like the older version when inspecting many JS functions and such.

I'd expect google.com to be fully standards compliant, but for some reason I believe IE was forcing itself back to IE8 mode for it. Never understood why. Even in IE8 mode though, this should have worked fine- so could be something worse (identify as IE8, execute as IE11?).

Re: IE11 on Windows 8.1 - Google Search loads in legacy mode

#8
post #3
post #2

This seems to solve it: IE11 -> Tools -> Compatibility View Settings. Remove check on "Use Microsoft Compatibility lists".

but what is this setting ? it doesn't look like an UA switcher.

For a site like Google, I see no reason why Microsoft should have put it into compatibility mode- I have to assume that Google does testing on IE and any bugs should have been addressed quickly by Google.

Furthermore, by using compat mode, the only way for google.com to use newer features in IE is to ask Microsoft to take it off the compat list then push an update to all IE browsers.

In general, this compat list should die and sites should be targeting standards-compliant behavior. If they identify as standards compliant and are not, bugs should happen.

Re: IE11 on Windows 8.1 - Google Search loads in legacy mode

#10

Probably because of the new release of their layout engine. IE11 comes with trident 7 while all the previous versions use 6 or below. It might be causing the trouble with google. Probably that's why Google works well in compatibility view.

But the bug is that Google is broken in compatibility view and works properly when in standards view.
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