Troubleshooting: Internet Explorer Issues

Shareaholic publisher apps are compatible with Internet Explorer 9+.

If you find that there is a problem with how our Share Buttons or Related Content apps render in the Internet Explorer web browser, or they fail to appear only in this browser, yet are visible in Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc., there are a few things you'll need to check that specifically relate to how Internet Explorer loads page content.


First, visit any page on your site where you are experiencing a problem with the display of our apps, right-click to view Internet Explorer's shortcut menu, then select View source. This will open a new window with the HTML code for that page.

To quickly search for certain keywords in the source code, select Edit > Find... from the menu or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F to open the search dialog.


  1. To ensure that Internet Explorer will not load your content in Quirks Mode or use an older version of their rendering engine via Compatibility Mode, check the <head> of your page for the following code:

    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">


    WordPress & Drupal:


    Shareaholic for WordPress and Shareaholic for Drupal automatically adds this  compatibility setting through your HTTP Header behind the scenes when the plugin is active, but if your theme includes a different compatibility tag, this may cause a conflict resulting in our setting being nullified.

    Search for any other instances of http-equiv in your page source, and if present, update your theme's header by removing the meta tag to prevent a conflict.


    Other Sites:

    If you are using our standalone publisher apps, not our WordPress plugin, replace your http-equiv tag with the one listed above or add the tag if one is not present in the <head> of your site.


    Blogger:

    By default, all Blogger templates include a meta tag that forces all versions of Internet Explorer to behave like Internet Explorer 7.

    Because Shareaholic supports Internet Explorer 8 and higher, this default tag will break functionality for users even in the latest version of Internet Explorer.

    To apply a fix, visit your blog's Template section, press the Edit Template button, then find and replace the following code with the one provided above:

    <meta content='IE=EmulateIE7' http-equiv='X-UA-Compatible '/>



  2. Verify that the document type is present and correctly formatted. This is a crucial component of all pages on the web to indicate the standards in which the HTML is written. If the tag is not present, Internet Explorer will render the page in Quirks Mode.

    The doctype declaration should be the very first line in the source of any HTML page.

    There should not be any whitespace or other characters preceding the tag.

    It should also include the correct public identifier, which points to the official URL that contains details about how the page should render.


    A full list of standard doctypes can be found here.
    For more technical information on document types and Internet Explorer, click here.


Before reloading the page to check if your adjustments fixed the problem, empty all caches so that you will retrieve fresh resources.

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