I'm annoyed XP doesn't have IE 9 or DirectX 10+, but I guess that's Microsoft's way of getting people to upgrade to newer versions of Windows.
Based on current stats, I'd say IE 8 hasn't got long till you can ignore it but it really depends on how much market share you care about. Do people STILL target IE 6? IE 8 is on ~10%[1] and at the current rate it's dropping at should be at 5% by October - Just in time for IE 11?
As for blaming XP, I'm not sure you can completely. IE 8 is the default browser of Windows 7 and XP has more than double the market share of IE 6/7/8 combined. Most IE users seem to be schools and companies that haven't upgraded. Although IE 6 will definitely be gone by April 2014, we could very well be stuck with IE 8 for a very long time.
For the record, IE 6 and 7 should be ignored completely. Combined they have a market share of less than 1%.
For a rule of thumb, I commonly drop support once a browser crosses 5%. Might seem high but usually once it's at that level, it's only going to keep falling.
Something to look forward to, my estimates[2] put Firefox 3.6, Safari 5/5.1 and IE 6/7/9 to all be gone by the start of 2014. Of course, linear estimations should always be taken with a grain of salt.
AFAIK DX10+, D2D, DWrite etc was designed for the new driver model introduced with Vista and if XP display drivers are used they either don't work or fallback to software rendering. And yes IE9+ depends on D20/DWrite for its rendering, particularly for canvas etc.
Based on current stats, I'd say IE 8 hasn't got long till you can ignore it but it really depends on how much market share you care about. Do people STILL target IE 6? IE 8 is on ~10%[1] and at the current rate it's dropping at should be at 5% by October - Just in time for IE 11?
As for blaming XP, I'm not sure you can completely. IE 8 is the default browser of Windows 7 and XP has more than double the market share of IE 6/7/8 combined. Most IE users seem to be schools and companies that haven't upgraded. Although IE 6 will definitely be gone by April 2014, we could very well be stuck with IE 8 for a very long time.
For the record, IE 6 and 7 should be ignored completely. Combined they have a market share of less than 1%.
For a rule of thumb, I commonly drop support once a browser crosses 5%. Might seem high but usually once it's at that level, it's only going to keep falling.
Something to look forward to, my estimates[2] put Firefox 3.6, Safari 5/5.1 and IE 6/7/9 to all be gone by the start of 2014. Of course, linear estimations should always be taken with a grain of salt.
[1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combine...
[2] http://cl.ly/image/2d1G3Y1Q2m3k