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IE11 has just been released (as a developer preview) and i cannot find the IE7/8/9/10-emulator in IE11 dev tools. Does anyone know where to find them now ?

Charles
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Sliq
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    @BoltClock Dude, people don't know that "the question" already exist when they post, this is why they post. They are not stupid. Removing the excellent answer while leaving the question there (now without the answer) makes absolutly no sense and shows that SO needs to kick some of the "moderators". – Sliq Jul 30 '13 at 21:20
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    @moderators I originally was siding with the decision to mark this as duplicate. However, I noticed that you CANNOT find the answer to 'Browser Mode in IE11' by using any of the words Sliq used in his question. I myself chose to use the words IE and emulator instead of Browser Mode. This question is unique in that it adds new meta information to the previous question. If this is closed at least add the tags emulator to the previous question as it can't be found by searching 'IE emulator' or 'IE8 emulator IE11 dev tools' etc. – Andrew T Finnell Oct 29 '16 at 22:31

1 Answers1

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I posted an answer to this already when someone else asked the same question (see How to bring back "Browser mode" in IE11?).

Read my answer there for a fuller explaination, but in short:

  • They removed it deliberately, because compat mode is not actually really very good for testing compatibility.

  • If you really want to test for compatibility with any given version of IE, you need to test in a real copy of that IE version. MS provide free VMs on http://modern.ie/ for you to use for this purpose.

  • The only way to get compat mode in IE11 is to set the X-UA-Compatible header. When you have this and the site defaults to compat mode, you will be able to set the mode in dev tools, but only between edge or the specified compat mode; other modes will still not be available.

Community
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Spudley
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  • It would be nicer if modern.ie downloads weren't 1GB each, with a license that expires in 30 days (although if it's win7, it can perhaps be 're-armed' after 30 days), but it's better than nothing. – yitwail Dec 22 '13 at 20:06
  • @Spudley: I didn't see a mention of the free VMs in the "How to bring back Browser Mode in IE11?" answers. I think it would be worthwhile adding it, as you say the IE11 compatibility mode does a bad job of emulating the earlier IE versions. – Simon Tewsi Feb 09 '15 at 22:42
  • yuck a microsoft solution on top of a microsoft solution? how about browserstack? i use that. but i would rather find someting easier, like a switch in IE11. – blamb May 01 '15 at 01:22
  • But document mode can't emulate feature set from older browsers? I.e. if IE 10 don't support flexbox in css, setting document mode to IE10 won't turn off certain HTML5/CSS3 features in newer browser, to emulate behaviour of older IE? – spaffy Jun 28 '16 at 10:08