Frankly, I’m with Zakalwe on this one. I’m tired of people coming into questions about IE and posting “you should just use a different browser”. That seems like threadshitting to me. If you don’t like IE, don’t open threads talking about IE.
My comment had nothing to do with IE dislike, it was purely pragmatic as the SDMB has no control over the IE rendering engine and SDMB is not going to make any custom changes to vBulletin, thus different browser is just about the only choice.
Actually, it’s not. In IE11, you can add a domain to the Compatibility View list - thereafter, IE will remember any changes to things like the Agent string and apply them in the same context in future.
That would in fact have been a complete solution to this issue. I just tested it and it works.
BTW, it sounds like you were tinkering with the wrong dropdown box there - ‘7 mode (default)’ is an option in the Document Mode dropdown.
The User Agent String setting is a couple of boxes further down.
Forget it, Jake. It’s IEtown.
Actually IE has only 30 percent of the global market. Chrome has almost 40 percent. And if you are in IT your stuff should be standards-compliant and not browser-dependent. IE is the worst Tier 1 browser for standards-compliance.
Sounds like a good solution, and that is clearly what the OP was looking for, but it doesn’t invalidate a suggestion of other browser due to the SDMB having very little control/desire to fix anything like this.
This and all the other technical settings for IE that have been mentioned in this thread: Are there equivalent settings and configurations for Firefox too?
Yeah, that’s right! IE is teh Evile! IE Users is Evile! Do you think Obi-Wan Kenobi used IE? Well, DID HE? 
I guess not. I’m not a habitual user of IE myself (I use it when I need to, usually for online stuff relating directly to Microsoft), but I think perhaps your call to abandon ship might have just been a little premature.
I did not know that. Most of my clients are government agencies and while public facing stuff has to be standards-compliant, the internal stuff just “has to look right in IE7-9.” 10 is just now being added to the list. Hell, IE6 just dropped off the list last year.
Well, I can see why you think that, but the tone was wrong (at least to me).
“You know I don’t know anything about IE, but I’ve never had a problem like that when I upgrade Chrome or Firefox, maybe try one of those instead.” would have been, while not exactly helpful, at least not dismissive.
Yeah, probably, but one of the nice things about IE11 is that it doesn’t overwrite 10, so reverting is simply a matter of uninstalling 11. I’ll give it a few weeks/months and one day when I’ve got more time to mess around, I’ll probably upgrade back and work it through.
Yes. Back in the dark days of 1E6 dominance when web developers broke down screaming obscenities at Microsoft, it was normal for Firefox users to change the user agent so as to access business sites which mandated the inferior browser.
Dunno about evil, it’s just a tool, but IE remains the browser of choice for Jar Jar Binks, and his ilk.
According to this, only 11% of the damn planet uses IE, and 51% of this gosh darn goofy planet use Chrome.
Appreciate that people took the time and effort to talk this situation through. This is not the first time software changes and upgrades have been at issue and will not be the last.
As far as the SDMB is concerned, there’s a whole lot of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” here. This attitude has actually served us very well in the big and small picture as well. I used to be one of those types who wanted every update, every addition, every plugin, etc.; wanted to be first, wanted to be an early adopter, even. The experiences we’ve had here on the board have totally reversed that policy view; now I’m the last person to go to a new iteration/new platform.
For as many people as want a reliable experience from this board, it serves us best to let someone else work out the bugs, find the problems. It’s been to our benefit here at the Dope; as massive and sometimes unwieldy as this board is, it would be vastly larger and even more difficult to manage if we were on higher versions of vBulletin. We have learned from the not so good experiences of others and dodged those bullets, mostly from benign neglect. We got lucky.
At the present time there are no plans that I know of to change or upgrade the current bulletin board software. So what you see is what there is and unless and until that day when they tell us otherwise it bees that way.
FWIW I have IE 11 now on my system. Don’t use it much, but a quick check reveals no difference at all on this site from IE 10 nor Chrome. An issue with cleartype or something?
I can see a difference between IE11 and 10 - the line spacing is greater in IE11, quite measurably. The font rendering looks taller too, but I’d have to do some fine measurement to prove that (or work out if it’s a perception thing caused by some other difference like the whitespace changes)
I did a side by side comparison with IE11 and Chrome now, and I have to retract my previous statement. There is a difference in the rendering of text, even after I’d gone trough a clear type setup. Compared to chrome, IE11 has less line spacing, and the text is a bit more fussy. As someone mention in another thread, the difference is most noticeable with ‘W’
And those government agencies would be in violation of law. Adding insult to injury by separating external from internal sites just adds another whole set of violations. Here’s hoping the Dept. of Homeland Security suit wins for the plaintiff because it’s ramifications will be widespread.
If you had said “That is an issue with the way IE renders and is not something that the SDMB controls”, that would have been an answer. Saying “You should use a different browser” is threadshitting, IMO.
I didn’t say “should”, did I?
I offered a solution to someone that appeared to me to be naive about these things, that’s all.
You are allowing your past experiences with IE and other posters to influence your interpretation of what happened here.
If you’re on IE10, you can go to the About Internet Explorer screen and uncheck the "install New Versions Automatically’ box. I usually like to give new version of IE at least 6 months before I upgrade to them.