If less than IE9 [closed]

Here is my ammended version of your code:

<?php
if( is_ie() && get_browser_version() < 9 ) {
    if ( is_active_sidebar( 'countdown-ie' ) ) {
        dynamic_sidebar( 'countdown-ie' );
    } else {
        ?>
        <div class="pre-widget">
            <p><strong>Widgetized area 1</strong></p> 
            <p>This panel is active and ready for you to add some widgets via the WP Admin</p> 
        </div>
        <?php
    }
} else {
    if ( is_active_sidebar( 'countdown' ) ){
        dynamic_sidebar ('countdown');
    } else {
        ?>
        <div class="pre-widget">
            <p><strong>Widgetized area 2</strong></p>
            <p>This panel is active and ready for you to add some widgets via the WP Admin</p>
        </div>
        <?php
    }
}

Changelog:

• Your initial check now uses the is_ie and get_browser_version functions
• Fixed PHP tag spam. There’s no need to wrap every statement in PHP tags, it’s just extra effort to type out
• Switched to the original conditional syntax of if () {} else {} to simplify
• Indented HTML
• Removed trailing spaces
• Fixed a broken closing PHP tag ? >
• dynamic_sidebar always exists, you should be checking if there are any widgets in that sidebar instead, so use is_active_sidebar
• Some wordpress coding standards fixes

A final note

You shouldn’t be sniffing the user browser. This code will fail if you have caching enabled ( user 1 is on IE, page gets cached, user 2 is on firefox but sees cached IE page.. )