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Update your site to web standards

Today, users can choose from a variety of modern web browsers, including Internet Explorer 10. In order to take advantage of the rich capabilities of most modern-day web browsers, while continuing to provide a satisfactory experience on older browsers, design your websites using features based on established standards, such as HTML5, Cascading Style Sheets, Level 3 (CSS3), and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). This section highlights topics that help you update your site to web standards.

In this section

Topic	Description
Enable web standards support	Windows Internet Explorer 9 supports a variety of established and emerging standards, such as HTML5, CSS3, SVG, and others. For Internet Explorer 9 to display a webpage that uses features from one or more of these standards, the webpage must be displayed in IE9 Standards mode.
Investigate document mode issues	This topic helps you learn how to use the F12 developer tools to research and identify a problem related to the document type of a webpage.
Detect features instead of browsers	This article shows how to use feature detection to verify support for standards-based featured and demonstrates different ways to detection features effectively.
Create an effective fallback strategy	This article shows how to create effective strategies that allow webpages to display correctly when viewed with web browsers that do not support features defined by stable, widely supported standards.
Review the compatibility cookbooks	The Windows Internet Explorer Compatibility Cookbooks provide information about changes to Internet Explorer, including new features, changed features, and features that have been superceded or replaced. New topics will be added as features are modified and as user feedback identifies areas where more information is needed.

To prepare your site for web standards

Learn the basics:

As you create your website:

If you're creating a new website or a new site design, be sure to be Creating Standards-Enabled Websites.
Review the Internet Explorer Compatibility Cookbooks for help troubleshooting issues that you might encounter.
Use the Internet Explorer 10 Samples and Tutorials and the Internet Explorer 9 Samples and Tutorials for additional information regarding standards-based features supported by Internet Explorer.

If you've already created a website:

Use the Compat Inspector to identify potential issues with your existing design.
Move to Standards-based Web Graphics.
Be aware of Interoperable HTML5 Quirks Mode in Internet Explorer 10 and Windows Store apps.

To troubleshoot issues:

It's one thing to recognize that you need to create standards-enabled websites, but another to know how to do that, especially if you're used to older techniques and processes.