CODE: Enforcing browser render engine

This article is of technical nature, and is about how to code the browser to always use a specific rendering engine, to ensure your page shows as expected and desired.

Use the following meta tag in the header section.

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

In the content, you can have different values.

the value "Edge" forces the browser to use the latest available version on the machine. This will often be used as the latest version is to prefer, but remember if the latest version comes with changes, you are unaware of - this could mean breaking your code.

Fx: "IE=7;IE=9" which will render IE7 and IE8 as IE7, but IE9 as IE9. This can make backward compatibility more granular, but is often corrected through code specific changes instead. This is of course only if it is possible.

The use is often to ensure a rendering of either the latest, or a an older/specific browser model as this would ensure compatibility for an older component needed that cannot be replaced with a newer.

It can be compared to CSS styling, where you can write a color transition of the background as the last parameter, but a colorcode as the first to ensure backward compatibility if the browser doesn't understands the color transition.

To read more about the subject go to: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6771258/what-does-meta-http-equiv-x-ua-compatible-content-ie-edge-do