[jonrimmer]

Depends on where you source your browser usage statistics, but IE9's share is smaller than IE8's. For example, caniuse.com[1] has IE8 on 3.18%, and IE9 on 2.13%. Later versions of IE (and Windows) are better at auto-updating, and people using them seem to be more willing to upgrade.

I'm lucky enough to work for a company with a last-2-versions support policy for IE, meaning IE10 and 11 are all I have to worry about. I can't understate how much nicer it makes web development. So much of the bad reputation of web technologies stems from wrestling bugs in old versions of IE and the lack of proper layout capabilities in CSS.

[1] http://caniuse.com/#search=flex

[apaprocki]

In case you want a more "mainstream" sample, I see this on bloomberg.com: IE9 6.20%, IE8 4.09%, IE11 3.80%, IE10 3.12%, IE7 0.42%

[jonrimmer]

To be clear, the caniuse.com stats are sourced from StatCounter Global Stats[1], not from the site itself, so they should be fairly reliable, albeit averaged across the world. Obviously, nothing beats measuring for your own site and audience.

[1] http://gs.statcounter.com/