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30/09/2011

Why IE defaults to compatibility view for some sites that are not on a Compatibility View List

Something was bugging me one morning after a colleague had asked me for some CSS help. I could see that the problem was due to IE quirks mode, but looking at his doctype declaration I could not see a good reason why the page was being rendered in quirks mode.

So I checked my suspicions out over lunch. To read the long story, start here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288325(v=vs.85).aspx

The short story is:

IE8/IE9 default to showing 'intranet' sites in compatibility view (IE7 standards), even if a valid doctype is present.

This explains why http://colleague-dev-server/ for example was being rendered as IE7 for him even though he had the standards doctype setting on, but when released onto a site with a fully qualified domain name such as on his staging server, it appeared differently by default.

The way to override this behaviour is either:

By the developer: Send the http header "X-UA-Compatible: IE=8"

By the user: IE -> Tools -> Compatibility View Settings -> untick "Display intranet sites in Compatibility View" -> Close

If you try the latter with the IE F12 dev toolbar open, you'll see that IE no longer automatically strips the doctype out of 'intranet' sites.

Sev.

Posted at 11:00 by Sev Roberts | Category: CSS | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

29/01/2009

Learning whilst on Safari?

I was recently reading an old colleague's blog recently, where they were lamenting the lack of up to date IT books in UK libraries.

It soon dawned on me that my fellow developer and his sympathisers may not be aware of Safari Books Online. I have found this to be an excellent resource over the last few years, allowing me to browse and read the latest up-to-date IT books from anywhere I have a computer and internet connectivity.

True, there are times when it is nice to have good old paper pages to sift through, but for all other times this is the winner for me. Most major IT publishers are represented nowadays. Books are quick to search. There's no need to lug books around between home/office/meetings. No more wondering how to donate/dispose of all those older "Object Oriented Programming with Java SDK 1.2"-esque volumes gathering dust and taking up precious bookshelf space. No more wasting time finding/losing pages again, as you can save multiple bookmarks online.

For the record I have no affiliation with Safari, but if you are in the market for ~10 year old Computer Science textbooks, contact me :-)

Posted at 17:07 by Sev Roberts | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

26/11/2008

Welcome!

And in the future we will look back at this monumental post and think "Here's where it all began!". Or not, as the case may be.

I will be adding new Sharepoint, ColdFusion and other technical tidbits on a regular basis in 2009, but for now I will use this first post to list improvements I will be making to this blog layout:

Update master pages to remove some of the unwanted layout tweaks from recent Theme development.
Finish CSS and Theme changes.
Add in custom css-switching script so that non logged-in users can see the beautiful rounded web part corner in the top-right too.

Posted at 15:33 by Sev Roberts | Category: Sharepoint | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

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