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"Graciously", when IE browsers are the odd ones out, the most non-standards-compliant ones? I'd kind of take it as a given, and it still wouldn't remove the strikes against older version of IE.

BTW, when you refer to code that isn't "browser-specific", do you mean compliant to web standards? Or to the minimum working set between all browsers? Aren't most of the IE hacks people use "browser-specific" to IE?

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The problem here is you're simply comparing applies to oranges. Internet Explorer 6 was released in 2001. For its time, it was a very nice product. IE 7 may have faltered a bit, but IE 8 was strong. Of course IE versions 6-8 are going to smell like manure vis à vis Chrome 27; a decade's elapsed. A proper comparable for IE 6 would be Opera 6.

Regarding your aside, I'm referring specifically to a generalized approach based on observations and not assumptions. I don't consider something trivial such as `event || window.event` browser-specific; it's a strategy used in accordance with multiple event models. You might be surprised to know that Microsoft created the blueprint for the DOM 3 event model (via attachEvent, etc.). They also were the first to use `innerHTML`, `innerText` and `Element.children`.

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