title: IE8 standards mode meta tag
body: <p>A web application we have for an organisation that is officially upgrading its standard browser from IE6 to IE8 (queue celebrations), we've set all our DOCTYPEs to be <code>&lt;!DOCTYPE html&gt;</code> (as well as fixed other html code) and I thought that in IE8 this would cause the page to be rendered in IE8 Standards Mode. However, it is still shown in IE7 Standards mode.</p>
  
  <p>I've added the <code>&lt;meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8"&gt;</code> into the <code>&lt;head&gt;</code> section and it still fails to default to IE8 Standards mode. I'm presuming at this stage that there must be a setting (perhaps Group Policy etc) that is forcing the mode.</p>
  
  <p>After reading a hack on an MSDN forum that if you put the meta tag before the <code>&lt;html&gt;</code> tag, it correctly displays as IE8 Standards mode, and this worked for me. Is there another way to do this? It just looks terrible seeing the meta tag there...</p>
  
  <p>Here's roughly how each page is made up:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;!DOCTYPE html&gt;
  
  &lt;meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8"&gt;
  
  &lt;html lang="en"&gt;
  &lt;head&gt;
      &lt;meta charset="utf-8"&gt;
      &lt;title&gt;Page Title&lt;/title&gt;
  &lt;/head&gt;
  &lt;body&gt;
  &lt;/body&gt;
  &lt;/html&gt;
  </code></pre>