Sites that are built to be responsive to width changes (such as www.readwrite.com) will respond differently in the desktop IE versus modern IE.
In the readwrite.com example, the site adapts to new browser widths on the desktop IE (and on the phone). However, it does not adapt correctly in the modern IE. This is especially troublesome because the modern IE is the one more likely to be"snapped" to a small width on the side of the screen.
I've been told that IE and Modern IE should render the same markup identically, but this is of course not the case in this situation. Sites cannot specifically detect that they are running in modern mode, but one CSS rule has been provided to alleviate the problem:
@-ms-viewport {
width: device-width;
}When this CSS rule is added, the site functions responsively inside the modern UI the same as it already did on desktop/phone.
Question: Is this desired operation? Are the two modes supposed to render markup differently? Why would phone/desktop adapt correctly, where modern cannot?
Is it up to sites to add this code? It seems we need an informational awareness campaign, because many sites (such as readwrite example here) would operate much more elegantly and support the Windows modern UI platform and users much better if this single CSS rule was added to their sites.
Given the lower user base of Windows tablets, many sites are not aware of this need. And users experience a bad experience because of it, resulting in poor perception of the Windows platform.
I would really hope for an update that solves the issue, by having modern IE render the same as desktop IE (which is supposed to already be the case, according to the developer instructions).
Shawn Keene
