i have successfully compiled a "blink" for the attiny84 then loaded it with avrdude and an icsp type programmer.
the attiny had only power, ground, the programming pins and a led hooked up.
there is no bootloader used, just the bare ivr. i was not able to get the ide to do the upload but that may have been my homebrew programmer. i get the impression that the ide will happily drive a programmer - the bootloader emulates one of the protocols that's used by the programmers.
I also believe there are bootloaders for the attiny's but i don't have one.