How good is IE8 browser mode in Internet Explorer 10?

Question

I started a new project that should support Internet Explorer 8 and above. On my development machine, I have IE 10. If I open the IE 10 developer tools (by pressing F12), I can change the mode to "IE 8", presumably emulating IE 8.

My question is: how good is this emulation? I see that Microsoft is kind enough to provide us with a virtual machine using IE 8 for testing , but it would certainly be more convenient if I could do the bulk of my testing using IE 10 in IE 8 compatibility mode.

Does anyone run websites that display differently in IE8 than in IE 10 in IE 8 mode? It would be very convenient for me to see specific examples.

Answer 1

Having done many compatibility tests for the interfaces of the main websites, I can say that this is not a complete replacement for using the actual version of the browser that you want to test. Although it is useful for viewing any urgent issues, we often find that those who relied on dev tools in IE9 did not have problems that were apparent in full versions of IE7 and IE8.