Should I depend on HTML5 elements, such as <footer> [closed]

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I know IE lacks a lot of support for HTML5 element?

Do people really still use IE8?

Answer 1

In answer to your question about IE8, it appears that about 9% of visits are from IE8, at least in North America: StatCounter. Remember that many corporate environments are slow to push browser upgrades across their large, managed computing base. IE10 is barely hitting 15%.

Here's more info in what HTML5 features IE10 does and does not support: HTML5Test: IE10. Code accordingly.

As for depending on elements like <header> or <footer>, don't. There's technically no need to do so, as you can code it to degrade gracefully by putting <div> tags (which legacy browser recognize) within the header or footer tags, then code your CSS accordingly. Same goes for structural elements like <section>.