How to fix Internet Explorer 8 messing up WordPress themes

Here’s a mini-plugin (single line of code actually) that will prevent the new IE8 (aka Internet Explorer 8 ) from messing up your carefully crafted WordPress or bbPress design.

<?php if (strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],"MSIE 8")) {
header("X-UA-Compatible: IE=7");} ?>


Make a mini-plugin out of it and activate.
(you might be able to put it into functions.php if that executes before other data is sent but I am uncertain – for the extremely lazy you could in theory put it as the very very first line of header.php in your template)

I also have it listed as a more formal plugin over here

For those that don’t want to install IE8 permanently to just test their webpages, this version will run in it’s own virtual box so it doesn’t affect the rest of your system:
http://start-o.xenocode.com/layers/ie8/8-0-0-0__2/ie8.exe
There’s no install, it just runs instantly from that one file.

March 19, 2009 | Categories: PHP, WP fixes, WP themes | 58 Comments