Is there a way that I can force IE8 users to enter IE7 compatibility mode when they hit my website so that I don’t have to change my working IE7 site?
Yes. There is. Details are on this Microsoft blog.
Essentially, there are two ways to implement this:
- On a per-site basis, add a custom HTTP header
X-UA-Compatible: IE=EmulateIE7
- On a per-page basis, add a special HTML tag to each document, right after the <head> tag
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />
I hope that works for you. I understand from some that even with this setting, you might have to tweak a few things.
Enjoy!