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Comment by smitjel | Hacker News Reader

Yes, it's javascript overhead you have to add to your site so that people using IE will be able to see CSS3-like effects. So why add the overhead just so users of IE can have rounded boxes and gradients. Why bother? It's just eye candy...

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On many sites, IE 6-8 users account for more than half of visits, and are often the single largest block of visitors by browser. Assuming you have such a site and don't want to just write off 50% of your users design-wise, it's nice to have the ability to use border-radius and other CSS3 advances, because they save you from a lot of time-consuming, repetitive work.

If you are in a situation where you can simply forget about what your site looks like in IE, then I envy you. Most web designers are not.

No, that strictly depends on how you've designed your site. To have your site look the best in ALL browsers, make subtle use of CSS3 effects. Don't _rely_ on them. If you follow that, you won't be writing off "50%" of your users design-wise.

Sure, but then you're writing off CSS3 and continuing to write code as if it were 2006, which I personally don't like having to do.

Let's not forget conditional comments. The overhead for other browsers could be completely negligible.

Excellent point.

lojjic, you should illustrate that in the docs somewhere.

I don't believe it's any Javascript overhead for non-IE browsers. It's just a single line of CSS:

behavior: url(path/to/PIE.htc);

that non-IE browsers will simply ignore.

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