Chrome, Firefox and Safari have no problem doing it, so it's very likely a political decision.
I think Microsoft has some responsibility to update IE6 on XP, given that they left it out on the market so long and caused an incalculable amount of time to be lost developing for it while the rest of the worst was trying to move on.
[1] http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/info/FrequentlyAskedQuesti...
I hope Mozilla and Google take advantage of this opportunity.
Hopefully, there's more to come.
There are ways to use svg to implement scalable gradients: http://css3wizardry.com/2010/10/29/css-gradients-for-ie9/ . With some clever engineering someone could make a library that automatically converts gradient styles into SVG backgrounds.
I'm afraid our problems with IE involves other people using it, and their choice to do so is largely beyond our control.
The real smoking gun that it still isn't modern is that it doesn't include a spellcheck by default. You can't claim to be doing what users want while ignoring that elephant in the room.
Spelling words properly, just for one day
It still doesn't work in Firefox4 though. Not sure if I'm surprised.
twelve months
twelve months
twelve months
Or launch like the rest of the software development world now operates and push out updates on a regular basis, with new features and better standards support, leading to something that actually has a chance of competing with the browsers the rest of us love to use?
'Cause I think it was around 2000 that people started realizing that monolithic development and release cycles lead to failed products. Software needs to be, and can be, updated constantly, or it falls behind. If this launch is like all other IE launches, it will be a day we will all look back on with disappointment. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see Microsoft actually become a modern development house, but I have huge doubts that it could ever happen.
