any side effect if I add ' <meta http-equiv=“X-UA-Compatible” content=“IE=edge,chrome=1”>' on my page?

Question

HTML5Boiler plate suggests we put this one in our HTML page if we favour Chrome over IE (which is my case)

<!-- Always force latest IE rendering engine (even in intranet) & Chrome Frame -->
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1">

We all understand how it works. If the user is using IE but it has also installed the Chrome Frame the chrome frame will be used to run the page (which is probably much faster when it comes to execute my js)

The question: is there any 'bad' side effect ?

any particular reason why I should not add that snippet ?

Thanks

Answer 1

This does not have any downsides.

This will force the browser to render as properly as it can, ignoring those awful IE Compatibility modes.

This will not break the browser, just peacfully explain to it, that this page doesn't wish to be experimented with, and just to be shown properly.

Answer 2

The only downside I know about this snippet is that validators don't accpet yet the content value of this meta (even if they should), so if it seems annoying to you, just remember you can also specify it inside an .htaccess (as suggested also on html5 boilerplate site)

See https://gist.github.com/1292092 for an example of htaccess inclusion

See also this thread about meta validation

Answer 3

There are in fact downsides to this meta tag (along with conditional comments) which is why we recommend you reference it from the server. See this issue for details.