Even with IE, you want to try to figure out why it is interpreting something differently rather than just hack around it. Adding * and _ hacks to your code willy-nilly is like finding out a function is returning the wrong value (say four less than it should be) and just adding the difference to it rather than figuring out where the math went wrong in the first place.
return result+4;
This is a must-read article for every Front-End Web Developer. So much great advice in it.