IE9 fix for Magento

Update: The Ides of March were doing their thing yesterday. If you were have trouble getting the extension to work (even after the first update) re-download and you'll be all set

Microsoft and The Internet Explorer team just released IE9 which, like every release, comes with a slew of improvements as well as a slew of problems for overworked web developers. The Magento ecommerce system uses and older version of the Prototype Javascript framework for ajax and DOM manipulation, and some usershave reported problems with their stores and systems.

Whatever you may think of Microsoft Inc., their strategy, and the software it creates, there's still a focus on providing some mechanism for backwards compatibility within their corporate culture. This includes the Internet Explorer team, which provides a custom <meta/> tag that will tell Internet Explorer to render things as though it was an older version of itself

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" /> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" /> 

Getting this tag into your document's <head/> element is the quickest way to solve any problems you have with IE9, and according to Stack Overflow user Nicholas Piasecki it clears up Magento's IE9 problems.

I've packaged up a quick Magento module that will automatically insert this tag into you page's <head/> and clear up any problem you're having due to Microsoft's new browser. This will provide you with a working system while we wait to see if there's an official patch coming from Magento Inc., or if it's a situation that will be fixed in a future version of the cart.

While I'm polishing this up for an official Magento Connect release, I'd urge you to check all your sites/applications for IE9 compatibility and then fix them to work without a X-UA-Compatible tag. While it's great that the IE team provides this mechanism it is, as best, a band-aid. Give your Windows users the experience they deserve, and you'll reap the benefits.