Internet Explorer 11 Compatibility Fixes for SharePoint 2013

As many of you have noticed, IE11 just doesn’t work correctly with SharePoint 2013:

  • Edit Page doesn’t place the page in Edit mode (especially on custom page layouts)
  • If you do happen to use a built-in page layout, any webparts added are unable to be customized
  • The calendar view doesn’t look right
  • The calendar overlay button on the calendar view is disabled

I’ve wondered why Microsoft failed to include IE11 browser support even after SharePoint 2013 SP1, but rather than sit and wonder I decided to take action.

This happens to be mostly the same issue that I detailed in my previous post about SharePoint 2010 and I now understand what went wrong. By default, all master pages (including ones that you create in Design View) are set to be in IE10 mode via the X-UA-Compatible meta tag. This works fine for IE10 and below because it just appears to be IE10. For any browser lower than that, the page will display in IE(x) mode.

My fix involved creating a new masterpage and setting it IE10 Compatibility View from the X-UA-Compatible tag.

ORIGINAL

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=10" />

FIXED


<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE10" />

The difference between “IE=10” and “IE=EmulateIE10” is that IE=10 only changes the user agent to appear as IE 10, whereas IE=EmulateIE10 fully emulates the IE 10 browser including IE 10’s DOM/Javascript API (Compatibility View).

Applying this change allows IE 11 to work perfectly without having to manually put the site in Compatibility View per user. If you are compelled to, you could always go into the 15 Hive and apply this to all masterpages that have that original meta tag in it, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Hopefully this fix works for others. I would like to see if anyone encountered any issues.