It's easy to say IE9+ works but in the real world people aren't upgrading their version of IE like users of other browsers tend to do. While IE9 and above are much better than their predecessors by a long shot they still require you to jump through more hoops compared to any other browser. IE9 supports gradients but you have to feed it so,e conditional CSS for it to work as expected.
Overall it's misleading to say "IE9 and above work just fine you elitist hipsters" when we all know damn well there are still so many users on versions of IE older than 9 because XP won't let you or simply because Mocrosoft has traditionally not really encouraged or made it as easy to upgrade. To their credit I'm glad they're running commercials for IE10 and for this case, considering PayDirt's audience, it could be fair to criticize them for leaving all IE users out because we can reasonably assume they're using the latest greatest even if it is IE. But if you want to talk about IE being no problem to support in general then it's disingenuous to only mention the two latest versions because we know there are far too many users of the older ones to ignore. Users of other browsers are upgrading regularly so it's trivial to support old FF or Chrome (plus even FF's and Chromes's older versions support a hell of a lot more than comparable older IE's).
You know why we love to hate IE even when it improves? Because it feels like too little too late. Even the improvements are one step behind everyone else.
Bill. Just wanted to let you know that Microsoft has been auto-updating all users that have opted into MS updates on their Windows machines since January. A majority of XP users should now be on IE8, all other Windows machines should have IE9. http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/microsoft-decides-to-...
Be that as it may, it remains the case that the right solution is "we don't support older versions of IE" (unless the client is willing to pay extra for that of course), not "we don't support IE at all". In the real world, you get much better reactions from telling people "we don't support the old versions, you need to upgrade" than from "we're on a crusade against your platform in its entirety". This remains true _whether or not_ the people in question are willing to upgrade just yet.
IE is older and has a larger user base than other browsers- FF and Chrome also have their share of non-upgraders, and as they get older they will have the same problems.
Overall it's misleading to say "IE9 and above work just fine you elitist hipsters" when we all know damn well there are still so many users on versions of IE older than 9 because XP won't let you or simply because Mocrosoft has traditionally not really encouraged or made it as easy to upgrade. To their credit I'm glad they're running commercials for IE10 and for this case, considering PayDirt's audience, it could be fair to criticize them for leaving all IE users out because we can reasonably assume they're using the latest greatest even if it is IE. But if you want to talk about IE being no problem to support in general then it's disingenuous to only mention the two latest versions because we know there are far too many users of the older ones to ignore. Users of other browsers are upgrading regularly so it's trivial to support old FF or Chrome (plus even FF's and Chromes's older versions support a hell of a lot more than comparable older IE's).
You know why we love to hate IE even when it improves? Because it feels like too little too late. Even the improvements are one step behind everyone else.