Pete LePage and IE 8 Compatibility Interview @TechEd Barcelona

I caught up with Pete LePage again, this in time in Barcelona.  More importantly I caught up with him on my own turf at TechEd among all the wonderful IT Pros.  Now he was the stranger in the strange land.  We had a great conversation around how to think about Internet Explorer 8 and compatibility.  BTW, yes that really is the Mediterranean Ocean behind us. 

One of concepts we discussed in the interview was the x-ua compatible tag you can put in the HTTP Response Headers of your web servers.  Look for a quick screencast to show how this is done in the near future.  This metatag would affect all of the websites on the server:

"X-UA-Compatible value="IE=EmulateIE7"

Additionally the web developer can add a similar meta tag to the site or page.  The fun question is what meta tag wins, if there is a conflict between the server, site, page or user setting?  The answer is simple the page setting will always win in the case of a conflict.

Resources:

• Great article on IE 8 and compatibility: Compatibility and Internet Explorer 8 
• Additional information for adding custom HTTP response headers on various versions of IIS and Apache servers: 
  IIS7.0, IIS6.0, Apache 2.2, Apache 2.0, Apache 1.3
• Compatibly center: Internet Explorer Compatibility Center
• Check out the first interview with Pete here:
  http://edge.technet.com/Media/Pete-LePage-Talking-IE-8-Tools--PDC/