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What is Quirks mode in IE8 Developer toolbar?

I am wondering what is Quirks mode in IE8 Developer toolbar? Why page rendering is different in Quirks mode than in IE8 standard mode?

Solution

  • Simply speaking, it is for really old webpages to show in the way it always has been on IE. So if a webpage's HTML doesn't start with a DOCTYPE that indicates Standard Compliance Mode, then IE will show it in Quirks mode. In such mode, IE uses its own Box Model to render the page elements.

    A simple example is: IE's box model adds padding to the inside of the width, so a div occupies the width number of pixels, but Standard Compliance mode add the padding to the width, so a div will occupy width + padding number of pixels.

    You can try a div with width 300px and padding 100px and click between the modes in IE Developer's bar to see the difference.

    More info at: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirks_mode