
IE11 on Windows 8.1 - Google Search loads in legacy mode - T-A
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/9JPM-CF2KJU
======
cbr
IE11 normally sends "Trident/7.0" and not "MSIE". Apparently Microsoft has
added "google.com" to the Compatibility View List [1], which means IE11 now
sends Google a User Agent that does include "MSIE". Google is interpreting
this to mean it's an old version of IE, and sending the legacy view. You can
manually disable the CVL, but then other sites that Microsoft has determined
need old versions of IE won't work. I suspect Google will update their UA
regexp soon, and this will be fixed, but it does sound like a Microsoft bug.

[1] [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/gg699485(v=vs.85).as...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/gg699485\(v=vs.85\).aspx)

(I work for Google, on unrelated things.)

~~~
Touche
Why does the entire web community agree that feature detection is the way to
go and UA sniffing is bad, but time after time shows that Google does it on
nearly all of their products?

~~~
ahoge
Compatibility view doesn't just change the UA string. It actually switches to
a different (IE8-like?) engine.

~~~
gsnedders
It changes to one of: IE7 Standards Mode, IE8 Standards Mode, IE9 Standards
Mode, IE9 Almost-Standards Mode, IE10 Standards Mode, or IE10 Almost-Standards
Mode. I wish I was joking.

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josteink
Interesting quote:

 _I 'll tell you more guys. I've updated to windows 8.1 on my tablet a month
ago through MSND subscription and Google search worked just fine. Looks like
this problem appeared after public availability of Windows 8.1. So I believe
it's something that Google or Microsoft should figure out._

Not saying this is malicious. Maybe just Google is doing something silly.
Maybe Microsoft have slipped up on their compatibility-list-thingie (which is
a horrible invention IMO).

Sometimes adding too many special cases in your code instead of having one
"good enough" version for everyone will cause you a million problems you never
saw coming. I've had more bugs come from special casing than any general, "run
everywhere" code I've written.

I can easily see how both ends could be responsible for this problem, even at
the same time.

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mischanix
"Hey, if we make Google uglier, maybe people will use Bing!"

"Probably not, but let's mess with 'em anyway."

~~~
rschmitty
Unless it was google..

"Hey, if we make Google uglier, maybe people will use Chrome!"

"Probably, they are used to IE not working"

Not sure who had the slip-up, but evil works both ways :P

~~~
Yver
> IE11 -> Tools -> Compatibility View Settings. > Remove check on "Use
> Microsoft Compatibility lists".

That's the solution posted in that thread. It's an IE problem.

~~~
sp332
Tweaking Firefox to send the same user-agent string "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible;
MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; Trident/7.0)" causes the exact same problem.
It's a Google problem.

ETA: In standards mode, IE sends "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64;
Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko".

~~~
sounds
Firefox sending "MSIE 10.0" maybe, but not "MSIE 11.0"

------
devx
This seems to solve it:

IE11 -> Tools -> Compatibility View Settings. Remove check on "Use Microsoft
Compatibility lists".

~~~
AaronFriel
I'm trying to figure out what the problem is, and I can't see how the
compatibility list would force Google into such a legacy mode:

    
    
      <domain docMode="EmulateIE10" versionVector="10" uaString="10" featureSwitch="overrideXUACompatible:false">google.com</domain>
    

It seems to read as: render and present as IE10, and if there is a `<meta` tag
specifying x-ua-compatibility, don't ignore it.

There's another section that overrides the backwards/forwards cache setting
for google.com:

    
    
        <BFCache>
            ...
            <domain exclude="true">google.com</domain>
    

But I've no clue how that would affect rendering so much.

I've disabled both settings (commented out) and will report back if commenting
them out fixes Google.

~~~
cbr
I think the problem is that EmulateIE10 is slightly broken: it sends "MSIE 10"
but also "Trident/7.0". Real IE10 has Trident 6.0. This looks like it's
screwing up the UA regexes.

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dangrossman
It looks to have been fixed already. I'm on Win8.1, with IE11, and get the
same Google homepage I get in Chrome. I haven't touched any settings.

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enscr
So nobody @ MSFT has access to Google.com before shipping off the product.
Given that a typical engineer is so addicted to 'googling' all through the
day, this would've been noticed.

~~~
AaronFriel
(Strike this, see note below)

This problem just started in the last 24 hours - Google rendered fine and was
my default search engine for over a month running the 8.1 RTM, and for a few
months before that running the 8.1 Preview.

This isn't MSFT's fuck up _unless_ Google is doing feature detection and IE11
is presenting itself as not supporting some trivial HTML5 feature.

Edit: I stand corrected - it looks like something MSFT pushed out as a
compatibility list update around the general availability of 8.1 is causing
this.

~~~
AaronFriel
Edit2: I'm not convinced of the above anymore. It doesn't look like the IE
compat list is abnormal, but it could be a fluke interaction between Google
and IE11.

On the other hand, it's very strange that it suddenly occurred in the past
day, when I've been running 8.1 release for over a month.

~~~
reybango
It's also possible that Google made a change to their SERPs that didn't go
nicely with the docmode IE11 is rendering it in.

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w1ntermute
This is what I'm seeing in IE v11.0.9600.16384 on Windows 8.1 Pro (x64):
[http://i.imgur.com/9Vhx1pe.png](http://i.imgur.com/9Vhx1pe.png)

Enabling/disabling Compatibility View has no effect - it looks just fine to me
either way.

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CurtHagenlocher
For what it's worth, I found I had to turn compatibility mode back on in order
to upload files in Gmail.

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AaronFriel
Before anyone damns Microsoft or Google here, I'd like to mention Hanlon's
razor, or my preferred variant:

 _Never assume malice when ignorance will do._

Someone broke something, probably not intentionally. Microsoft has a shady
history here, Google has a shady history here (esp. with hostile treatment of
Microsoft user agents with YouTube and Maps!), so in the absence of further
evidence let's not point fingers.

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anuragramdasan
Probably because of the new release of their layout engine. IE11 comes with
trident 7 while all the previous versions use 6 or below. It might be causing
the trouble with google. Probably that's why Google works well in
compatibility view.

~~~
randomfool
But the bug is that Google is broken in compatibility view and works properly
when in standards view.

~~~
anuragramdasan
Oh crap. I read it the other way. My bad. It was only a guess on my part,
havent used IE ever.

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mal3x4u
??? 1\. who is using windows? (I can't believe that someone that uses windows
reads these news... just go for politics ! 2\. why don't you use a browser? IE
is known as a tool to download a browser!!!!!!

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kevinxucs
Wow, I am soooooooooooo surprised.

~~~
nodata
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6576521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6576521)
seems to indicate this isn't caused by Google.

~~~
kevinxucs
Gosh, nobody understands what I am saying?

~~~
nodata
Guess not :)

