Forgive this silly question but can someone explain in lamens terms the purpose of an X-UA Compatibility meta tag? Is it to force, say someone who is visiting my site in IE8, to see it as if viewing it from IE-Edge? Just curious as to its value and necessity of the code of the site is supposed to render ok in IE8 anyway.

 

Someone had asked about the meta tag in another forum (the leader of that forum has always told us not to use it and it messes with how the site is rendered), and so I never use it and as far as I can tell, my sites render fine. Just curious.

 

Please advise. Thanks.

It allows IE to decide what browser mode to use. If you set it to Edge it will always use the latest version of that browser. You should use this tag if you support IE8/9.

So the tag is for forward compatability purpurses, not backward? That is to say, if someone were using IE8 to view my site, the site would render as if viewing it in IE-Edge? Given what I was reading, I thought it was reversed. What about visitors using Chrome? Or Safari (ipad/iphone)? Same?

 

So it is something I should definitely implement if I wish to support IE8? Please advise.

No if they were viewing in IE8 it would mean that it will render in the latest version of that browser, not in some kind of compatibility mode.

 

It would be impossible for it to render in a more modern browser...

Ok. Thanks. And if I were to choose a compatibility mode, it would be IE-Edge, not Chrome etc. right?

Edited November 5, 201510 yr by RobertS

Yes Edge