As a webdeveloper, I'm familiar with these arguments - but really, it's not at all practical to code to the lowest common denominator. People running machines under similar conditions as yourself make up less than a tenth of a percent of overall users; I'm sure on LJ those numbers are *even lower*. And really, the sad truth is, this "specific subset" doesn't make enough of a dent in the revenue of a service like this to make it worthwhile to support those users.

Why change it at all? Because it's always a race to have the smoothest, best looking, most feature-rich service. And if they don't, their competition will, and they'll lose customers. So, I would suggest you hop on to one of the other services that don't have LJ's push for functionality - blogger or diaryland, perhaps?

Now, if *I* had done LJ and there was a *reasonable number* of older-browser users, I *certainly* would have made the old interface still available, and set a cookie on the machines of those who *wanted* the *new* interface. But supporting two versions is also not very cost effective. And frowned upon in the Web Development world.