what are the best meta tags to use to make all browsers view your site the same, would the best be <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=8"/> alone? or with others and if with others, what others?

thanks

I’m not going to bother to do a deep dive on the technique, but I’ll give you a hint, it looks something like this:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />

Essentially, this will tell IE8 to render in IE8’s standards mode, otherwise IE8 will render like IE7. Whoah. And then IE9, and so on.

The notion is that the Doctype Switch isn’t robust enough for long term browser updates and standards support, so something new was needed in addition to the Doctype Switch.

Will IE10 render like IE7 without the corresponding tag? I don’t know fully, but it’s interesting. Developer’s going forward will need to specifically update their pages and opt into more advanced features in new browsers (MSIE, at least) rendering modes’ to not break the Web.

Bottom line is I just have a ton of questions around what this means from a development standpoint. But that’s what separates developers like me and you from the developers this meta opt in is not targeted at. Right?

i) My biggest concern is backwards compatibility. Ironic much?

ii) What does this new feature for a site targeting IE8 mean for a user in IE7?

iii) Or even IE6? IE6/7 will render with the same quirks they have now?

iv) So how different will IE8 be?

v) What will IE8 do when IE=9 is specified?

vi) Are we going to have to apply the IE8 http fix, and then conditionally add an IE8 CSS file via Conditional Comments so the older browsers render it to their spec? Or vice versa?

vii) Can developers going forward in IE8, and IE9+ now trigger any rendering mode by meta tags only? Do our multiple installs of IE become a thing of the past?

viii) I want more information for the implications on the DOM, the flexibility with regards to standards and quirks modes and different meta tag values, etc.