Typekit Practice

The dangers of cross-browser testing with IE9’s Browser Modes

Ben Welch, writing for Typekit:

IE9 has a feature called Browser Modes that attempts to simplify cross-browser testing by emulating how a site would render in a real copy of IE7 or IE8. It’s available within IE9’s Developer Tools. While it’s a good idea in theory, in practice these emulated Browser Modes create more trouble than benefit because they behave differently than real copies of IE7 and IE8 would. In the case of web fonts, the differences in behavior are drastic, and can lead to inaccurate and misleading conclusions about what your page and web fonts will look like in these older browsers.