Turn off Compatibility View in Internet Explorer

By Ryan Johnson, technology training coordinator

Compatibility View in Internet Explorer was designed to allow older websites to display properly in Internet Explorer. Microsoft created compatibility view for Internet Explorer 8 to give web designers time to convert their pages over from the non-standard techniques used in IE 7 and IE 6, to a more web standard compliant version. It tells the browser to render the page as if it were IE version 7 rather than IE version 8 or 9.

Previously compatibility view was also used by CMS authors to author their pages in the CMS. With the new responsive design features recently released and the new CMS Version 5.6 set to release in the upcoming weeks, compatibility mode NO longer needs to be enabled. In fact, if you currently turn this feature on in IE, the libraries pages will NOT display properly.

compatibility view screenshot

Above is a screen shot of the Compatibility Mode icon circled in red. It is located on the right side of the address bar. The icon looks like a piece of paper ripped in half. You can toggle Compatibility Mode by just clicking on this icon. If the icon is blue, it is activated. If the icon is gray, it is deactivated.