How to add websites to Internet Explorer 11's Compatbility List

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Microsoft has recently released Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7.    There have been a lot

of good reviews of IE11 under the Windows 8 environment.   Microsoft has made some vast improvements to their flagship browser that makes it much more compatible with CSS and HTML5.   In fact, many of the benchmark scores for IE11 show it runs faster and is using fewer resources than Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. 

This post is not intended to be a review of IE11.   Personally, I have been quite impressed by a lot of things with IE11, but unsatisfied with other things.   Maybe one day, I will write my personal review of IE11...probably right around when IE12 is getting released. 

Rather, this post is intended to help with the biggest problem I am seeing with IE11 and that is accessing older sites that require earlier versions of Internet Explorer.  

There are many sites my clients are using that are not compatible with IE11.  Now, whether that has something to do with the technology required by the website or simply the fact the USERAGENT information in IE11 no longer reports that it is Internet Explorer, I don't know.   What I do know is there are plenty of site my clients can't get to using IE11 natively.    



IE11's new UserAgent string.   What happened to MSIE?

However, it is pretty easy to get your old site viewable in IE11.   All you usually have to do is add your site to the IE Compatibility List.  Here is how you would do that:
 

(1) Open up Internet Explorer and navigate to the website you are having trouble viewing in IE. 

(2) Click on the TOOLS icon in the upper left hand corner of IE.   This icons appears as a 'gear':

 

(3) Choose Compatibility View Settings:

 

(4) If it is not already populate in the input box, type the URL of your website in the input box that reads "ADD THIS SITE"  and then press ADD.

 

(5) The site should now appear in the list of websites that will open in compatibility mode.   Choose CLOSE and refresh your page to see if you can now view the site properly.

A great test for me was to use log into blogger.com.   When I tried to log into my account to create this post, I received this error message:

 

After adding blogger.com to IE's compatibility list, I can now open it with no errors.   Hopefully, this will help alleviate a bit of frustration when dealing with IE11.  If you have any problems or questions, please contact us here at Binkley IT Consulting.   We can help!