jsf-2internet-explorer-9richfaces

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" /> ignored in RichFaces webapp

I'm using JSF 2.0 and RichFaces 3.3.3 on Glassfish 2.1. I've created a web application with a modal panel that works great in my computer (local server). Because of IE9 incompatibility of the specific RichFaces version, I'm using the X-UA-Compatible: IE=8 meta tag in my HTML head:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />

The modal panel look like this when I deploy in my local environment:

1ok

But when I deploy in the production server, I've a problem.

If I use IE with compatibility view comp
(source: geneanet.org)
, my modal panel look like this:

2no-ok

If I don't use the compatibility view, I see the modal panel but all my ajax buttons don't work.

How is this caused and how can I solve it?

Solution

  • From IE developer documentation, Defining Document Compatibility:

    ...

    The X-UA-Compatible header is not case sensitive; however, it must appear in the header of the webpage (the HEAD section) before all other elements except for the title element and other meta elements.

    ...

    RichFaces 3.3.3 by default auto-includes <link> elements referring RichFaces-specific CSS stylesheets in very top of the head, before the original <head> template content. So the X-UA-Compatible header in flavor of a HTML <meta> element would always fail to work in a RichFaces 3.3.3 webapp. That it works fine in your local development environment is most likely because you've added the localhost site to the list of IE8 compatible sites in browser configuration. The presence of the X-UA-Compatible header doesn't matter anymore then.

    Your best bet is to set the X-UA-Compatible header directly on the HTTP response itself instead of as a HTML meta tag. You can do that with a simple servlet filter which is mapped on FacesServlet and does the following job:

    @Override
public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response, FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException {
    ((HttpServletResponse) response).setHeader("X-UA-Compatible", "IE=8");
    chain.doFilter(request, response);
}