The rapid rate at which the new versions of all the browsers are being released, is forcing more and more websites to adopt to the latest standards and technologies. These new technologies are often designed to keep newer hardware in mind. If you try to open a modern website on your older PC, then perhaps your hardware would give up or take a long time to open that site. Internet Explorer works around this problem by opening older sites in the compatibility view. A site opened in compatibility view makes Internet Explorer render or communicate with that website in such a way as to improve compatibility and provide a better user experience on those sites. Prior to Internet Explorer 11, the compatibility view icon could be accessed from the address bar itself. But in Internet Explorer 11, it has been removed and now you would have to go through a few more steps in order to enable compatibility view for a website.
Here is how you can view a website in the compatibility view in Internet Explorer 11:
- Open Internet Explorer browser. Click on the gear-like icon and select Compatibility View settings from the menu that appears.
- This would open up Compatibility View settings window. Here you can add the domain name of the website that you want to open in the compatibility view. To add the domain name, just type the domain name in the text box (without http:// or www.) and click on the Add button.
- You can also choose whether to display all the local intranet websites in the compatibility view and whether to download the Microsoft’s list of sites and hardware to facilitate automatic compatibility view for those sites.
Once a website has been added to the compatibility view list, it would be opened in the compatibility view (you may have to refresh it by pressing Ctrl + F5).