Internet Explorer compatibility cookbook

The Windows Internet Explorer Compatibility Cookbook describes changes that might impact websites and apps developed for (or with) earlier versions of Internet Explorer. Many changes help Internet Explorer comply more closely with broader industry standards while other changes improve performance, security, and reliability.

The Developer Guides generally tell you about the features new to Internet Explorer; here's where you'll learn what's changed and what may require you to update your code.

Note You might be able to use legacy document modes to emulate the behavior of earlier versions. If you do this, keep in mind it's a temporary solution at best. Starting with Internet Explorer 11, document modes are considered deprecated and might not be supported in any future versions of the browser. For best results, update your sites and apps to use features and techniques supported by industry standards and multiple browsers.

Be sure to check back from time to time as we plan to update this with new info and respond to your feedback.

In this section

Topic	Description
Compatibility guidelines and best practices	By following good guidelines and best practices, you can avoid many common compatibility issues with Internet Explorer.
ActiveX controls and plugin changes	ActiveX controls and plugins behave differently in recent versions of Internet Explorer. Here's what you need to know.
Browser features and compatibility changes	Learn about changes to Internet Explorer itself and how these changes affect compatibility. Use these to help figure out why things seem different than they used to and, more importantly, what to do.
CSS and layout compatibility changes	Recent versions of Internet Explorer have changed the behavior of some CSS and layout features to better support modern standards and to ensure consistency with other popular browsers. Here, you'll find out how this can affect your older websites and what to do.
HTML and DOM compatibility changes	Recent versions of Internet Explorer have changed the behavior of several HTML and DOM features to better support modern standards and to ensure consistency with other popular browsers. Here, you'll learn how to use these changes effectively.
JavaScript compatibility changes	Recent versions of Internet Explorer have improved support for the latest version of the ECMAScript standard and align more directly with the JavaScript implementations of other browsers. Use this information to adapt your legacy sites to support the latest versions of Internet Explorer.
Legacy feature support changes	Review the features that are no longer supported and recommendations for what to use instead. Use this to get your sites working and keep them working.
Internet Explorer compatibility changes by version	Here is a list of cookbook topics that were added for each of the most recent versions of Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer compatibility cookbook

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