8 out of 19 rated this helpful Rate this topic

compatMode Property

.NET Framework 3.0

Gets a value that indicates whether standards-compliant mode is switched on for the object.

Syntax

Copy

[ sMode = ] object.compatMode

Possible Values

sMode String that receives one of the following values.
BackCompat
Standards-compliant mode is not switched on.
CSS1Compat
Standards-compliant mode is switched on.

The property is read-only. The property has no default value.

Remarks

When standards-compliant mode is switched on (also called "strict mode"), Windows Internet Explorer displays the document according to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) standard. When standards-compliant mode is not switched on (also called "quirks mode"), the document is displayed as it was displayed in previous versions of Internet Explorer.

The compatMode property is deprecated in Internet Explorer 8 in favor of the documentMode property.

With Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and later, you switch on standards-compliant mode by including the !DOCTYPE declaration at the top of your document, specifying a valid Label in the declaration, and in some cases, specifying the Definition or URL. The Label element specifies the unique name of the Document Type Definition (DTD), and can be appended with the version number of the DTD. The Definition element specifies the definition of the DTD that is specified in the Label. The URL element specifies the location of the DTD.

Examples

The !DOCTYPE declarations in the following examples specify conformance to the Transitional HTML 4.0 DTD. The declaration in the second example specifies the URL of the DTD. The declaration in the first example does not. The second declaration switches on standards-compliant mode with Internet Explorer 6 and later. The first declaration does not.
The compatMode property returns BackCompat with documents containing the declaration in the following example. This declaration does not switch on standards-compliant mode because it does not specify the URL of the Transitional HTML 4.0 DTD.
Copy
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
Code example: http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/samples/author/dhtml/refs/compatModeCompat.htm
The compatMode property returns CSS1Compat with documents containing the declaration in the following example. This declaration switches on standards-compliant mode because it specifies the URL of the Transitional HTML 4.0 DTD.
Copy
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" 
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
Code example: http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/samples/author/dhtml/refs/CompatModeCompliant.htm

Standards Information

There is no public standard that applies to this property.

Applies To

document, HTMLDocument Constructor

See Also

documentMode, CSS Enhancements in Internet Explorer 6

Did you find this helpful? Yes No

Not accurate

Not enough depth

Need more code examples

(2000 characters remaining)

Community Content Add

FAQ