How to tell MSIE8 to render your pages in MSIE7 compatibility mode

First of all, I really don't like MSIE7's rendering mode, but it is better than that of MSIE6.

MSIE8 (Beta 1) is expected to ship in "standards mode" by default, in other words, "not compatible with MSIE7 pages mode." That could be a problem.

I use Yahoo!'s YUI CSS libraries to "zero out" all the discrepancies between browsers so I have a clean slate on which to build. Most of the time it works pretty well -- until MSIE8.

Even in "standards mode" MSIE8 renders my pages MUCH differently than MSIE7, Firefox 2/3, and Safari 3. Why? No idea yet. In the meantime, here's how to make your pages load the same way in MSIE8 as they did in MSIE7.

To see how this magic works, head over to JoeTheWebGuy.net