Many of us have come across websites that haven’t been updated in a long time and don’t function correctly with the newer versions of Internet Explorer. This wasn’t a problem with Internet Explorer 10 because you could easily select a different browser mode from the development tools and the website will be displayed as if you were using an older version. This feature is also highly used by website developers to check that their websites are displayed correctly when using the previous versions.

The problem is that a lot of us have automatic updates enabled on our computers and Internet Explorer 11 was initially released with this nifty little feature missing! Microsoft have now implemented the feature again after receiving a bunch of complaints but it’s slightly harder to find.

Firstly you need to open the Development Tools either through the settings menu or by pressing F12.

 

The Development Tools section will now appear across the bottom on the web page. You will need to click on the down arrow to scroll down and display the other menu icons.

Click the monitor and phone icon at the bottom of the menu to open the Emulation options.

You can now choose a previous version of Internet Explorer to emulate using the Document Mode drop down menu.

You can also emulate Internet Explorer as if it was running on other devices such as Windows Phone or Xbox 360 by selecting them under the Browser profile/User agent string drop down menus.

Please note that you may have to re-install Internet Explorer 11 to use this feature if you upgraded before Microsoft implemented it again.