.Web Browser Control – Specifying the IE Version
http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/2011/May/21/Web-Browser-Control-Specifying-the-IE-Version
I use the Internet Explorer Web Browser Control in a lot of my applications to display document type layout. HTML happens to be one of the most common document formats and displaying data in this format – even in desktop applications, is often way easier than using normal desktop technologies.
One issue the Web Browser Control has that it’s perpetually stuck in IE 7 (MSIE 7.0) rendering mode by default. Even though IE 8 and now 9 have significantly upgraded the IE rendering engine to be more CSS and HTML compliant by default the Web Browser control will have none of it. IE 9 in particular – with its much improved CSS support and basic HTML 5 support is a big improvement and even though the IE control uses some of IE’s internal rendering technology it’s still stuck in the old IE 7 (MSIE 7.0) rendering by default.
This applies whether you’re using the Web Browser control in a WPF application, a WinForms app, a FoxPro or VB classic application using the ActiveX control. Behind the scenes all these UI platforms use the COM interfaces and so you’re stuck by those same rules.
Feature Delegation via Registry Hacks
Fortunately starting with Internet Explore 8 and later there’s a
fix for this problem via a registry setting. You can specify a registry
key to specify which rendering mode and version of IE should be used by
that application. These are not global mind you – they have to be
enabled for each application individually.
There are two different sets of keys for 32 bit and 64 bit applications.
[(HKEY_CURRENT_USER or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE)SoftwareMicrosoftInternet ExplorerMainFeatureControlFEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION]
32 bit:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftInternet ExplorerMAINFeatureControlFEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION
Value Key: yourapplication.exe
64 bit:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftInternet ExplorerMAINFeatureControlFEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREWow6432NodeMicrosoftInternet ExplorerMAINFeatureControlFEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION
Value Key: yourapplication.exe
The value to set this key to is (taken from MSDN here) as decimal values:
9999 (0x270F)
Internet Explorer 9. Webpages are displayed in IE9 Standards mode, regardless of the !DOCTYPE directive.
9000 (0x2328)
Internet Explorer 9. Webpages containing standards-based !DOCTYPE directives are displayed in IE9 mode.
8888 (0x22B8)
Webpages are displayed in IE8 Standards mode, regardless of the !DOCTYPE directive.
8000 (0x1F40)
Webpages containing standards-based !DOCTYPE directives are displayed in IE8 mode.
7000 (0x1B58)
Webpages containing standards-based !DOCTYPE directives are displayed in IE7 Standards mode.