What does <meta http-equiv=“X-UA-Compatible” content=“IE=edge”> do?

Question

What\'s the difference if one web page starts with

Answer 1

To make this line work as expected, make sure that:

1. It is the first element right after
2. No conditional comments are used before the meta tag, e. g. on the element

Otherwise some IE versions simply ignore it.

UPDATE

These two rules are simplified but they are easy to remember and to verify. Despite MSDN docs stating you can put title and other meta tags before this one, I would not recommend to do so.

How make it work with conditional comments.

Interesting article about the order of elements in the head. (blogs.msdn.com, for IE)

REFERENCE

From the MSDN documentation:

The X-UA-Compatible [...] must appear in the header of the webpage (the HEAD section) before all other elements except for the title element and other meta elements.