I've been looking around for a more elegant solution but have not found anything at this point. As per your question (how it's usually handled), my guess is that most developers would use feature detection as opposed to conditional comments to address browser issues. Truth is IE is pain in the ass any way you look at it, and people willing to support it in their projects (that use require) probably already have strategies in place to handle it. Chances are these include using feature detection of some sort.