Running your Tomcat Application in IE8 Compatibility Mode

Apache Tomcat set all Applications to run in IE8 Compatibility Mode

You want to upgrade your Internet Explorer version to the latest version (currently 11) but you want to ensure that this browser upgrade wont break any existing applications, especially those not certified above a lower release of IE, say IE8.

The instructions below will allow you set your tomcat server to run all applications in a specific IE compatibility mode. It is actually quite straightforward.

1) Create a simple JavaClass "IE11Filter.java"

The code should look like this:

package com.aait.web;

import java.io.IOException;

import javax.servlet.Filter;

import javax.servlet.FilterChain;

import javax.servlet.FilterConfig;

import javax.servlet.ServletException;

import javax.servlet.ServletRequest;

import javax.servlet.ServletResponse;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

// Servlet Filter implementation class IE11Filter

public class IE11Filter implements Filter {

public IE11Filter() {

// TODO Auto-generated constructor stub

}

public void destroy() {

// TODO Auto-generated method stub

}

public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response, FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException {

HttpServletResponse httpResp = (HttpServletResponse) response;

// Here we are setting compatability mode to be IE8

httpResp.setHeader("X-UA-Compatible", "IE=EmulateIE8");

// pass the request along the filter chain

chain.doFilter(request, response);

}

public void init(FilterConfig fConfig) throws ServletException {

// TODO Auto-generated method stub

}

}

Zip this one class up into a jar such as IE11Filter.jar and place this in the Tomcat-root\lib folder

2) Edit web.xml to Reference new Filter Class

Update the existing Tomcat-root\conf\web.xml at the section “Built In Filter Definitions” add the filter referencing the new java class

<filter>

<display-name>IE11Filter</display-name>

<filter-name>IE11Filter</filter-name>

<filter-class>com.aait.web.IE11Filter</filter-class>

</filter>

<filter-mapping>

<filter-name>IE11Filter</filter-name>

<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>

</filter-mapping>

Restart Tomcat. And that's it. Now your web applications should run automatically in IE8 Compatibility mode.