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After upgrading to Windows 8.1 and IE11, Google search results were all crunched up on the left. It was kind of hard to do a Google search on this because of the layout problem. Anyway, I did find some answers on how to fix the problem. It looks like it a Google problem and not an IE11 problem. The Google search page is not reading the correct User-Agent string for IE11.
This link shows what the IE11 User-Agent string should be. Here's a snippet from the web page.
To test this out, press F12 when using IE11 in desktop view while on the Google search results page. This will open the developer tools. Go to Emulation (Ctrl+8) and emulate a different browser by changing the User agent string to, for instance, Internet Explorer 10 or Google Chrome. The Google web page will display correctly.
The temporary fix for IE11 is to go to Tool / Compatibility View settings and uncheck Use Microsoft compatibility lists.
More info:
Understanding the Compatibility view list
How to Detect Features Instead of Browsers
Browser and Feature Detection
Using the F12 developer tools
This link shows what the IE11 User-Agent string should be. Here's a snippet from the web page.
By default, Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 8.1 sends the following User-Agent string:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko
This string is deliberately designed to cause most UA-string sniffing logic to interpret it either Gecko or WebKit. This design choice was a careful one—the IE team tested many UA string variants to find out which would cause the majority of sites to “just work” for IE11 users.
Contrast this string with the old IE10 on Windows 8 UA string:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.2; Trident/6.0)
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko
This string is deliberately designed to cause most UA-string sniffing logic to interpret it either Gecko or WebKit. This design choice was a careful one—the IE team tested many UA string variants to find out which would cause the majority of sites to “just work” for IE11 users.
Contrast this string with the old IE10 on Windows 8 UA string:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.2; Trident/6.0)
The temporary fix for IE11 is to go to Tool / Compatibility View settings and uncheck Use Microsoft compatibility lists.
More info:
Understanding the Compatibility view list
How to Detect Features Instead of Browsers
Browser and Feature Detection
Using the F12 developer tools
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