Determine if in IE8 Compatibility Mode using conditionals

Question

I understand from my research that IE8 does annoying things like forcing itself into IE7 mode for local intranet hosts and local IP ranges. I understand from a previous question that there is no way to use conditional statements as, irrespective of whether IE8 is rendering in IE8 or IE7 mode, it will still only use the <!--[if IE 8]> conditional.

Since this question was asked a while ago (during the IE8 beta phase by the looks of things) I am wondering if this has changed or if there is any other way using conditionals to determine if IE8 is in compatibility mode.

Thanks!

Answer 1

No, you can't do it using conditionals.

The best way to do it is to use the document.documentMode property as described in the link Pekka posted. How can I detect if IE8 is running in compatibility view?

Answer 2

http://msmvps.com/blogs/paulomorgado/archive/2010/04/05/defining-document-compatibility-in-internet-explorer-8.aspx

Answer 3

In the end, I chose to mix the two common strategies to deal with this bug.

I created an override CSS file, which I import using conditional comments. In the event of IE 8 or 9, though, this override doesn't look as good, so I include the 'force IE into latest rendering mode' header switch, as shown below.

<!--[if lte IE 7]>
  <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" />
  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/Content/IE7Overrides.csss" />
<![endif]-->

This provides IE7 with a decent failsafe, but forces IE8 and IE9 to show it in the latest browser, which will show the CSS-based table correctly.