According to MSDN, all I need to force standards compliant mode is to include the HTML 5 doctype:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg699338%28v=vs.85%29.aspx<
See the "IE Windows special: the xml prolog" section in this document:
http://www.quirksmode.org/css/quirksmode.html
Anything before the DOCTYPE will cause it to switch to Quirks mode
I had this same problem. I had the HTML5 doctype on my aspx file, but it still rendered in IE7 mode. I fixed it without setting HTML4.01 Strict, and without meta http-equiv.
My problem was that I had an ASP tag, then the doctype in a separate line. IE9 wants the doctype to be on line 1 and nowhere else.
So if you have this:
<%
' some asp code
%>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<!-- rest of file -->
Consider changing it to this:
<%
' some asp code
%><!DOCTYPE html>
<!-- rest of file -->
This worked for me even with @Import statements before the initial asp block:
<%@ Import Namespace="System.Text.RegularExpressions" %>
<%
' some asp code
%><!DOCTYPE html>
<!-- rest of file -->
Use
<!DOCTYPE html>
and add
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=9">
to the <head>
section of your HTML page. It will force Internet Explorer to use IE standards mode.
Try adding this:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
At the top of your page. I'm not sure if that will work locally if the other you tried didn't... but it's worth a go.