Long has the Acid Tests been one of the signs of a properly built web browser and the venerable Acid2 test has been the one to beat for years now. The tests are certainly not the end all and be all of web standards compliance but it’s a good start. Back in December when Firefox 3 beta 2 was about to hit the streets and I was testing the nightly builds of beta 3 I ran a post containing the results of running the Acid2 test in Firefox 2, Firefox 3b3pre and IE 7.0 and comparing the 3 resulting images side by side. The results of course showed that Firefox 2 didn’t quite cut the mustard, IE 7.0 failed horribly and Firefox 3 passed with flying colors.
But what about now? What about the 3 main browser makers that are getting close to releasing their next version? We’ve got 3 different beta versions running around and playing in the streets even as I write this so how do they stack up I wonder? Especially the new kid on the block, IE 8.0. Well let’s find out shall we?
For this round I’m using Internet Explorer 8.0 beta, Opera 9.5 beta and the latest nightly build of Firefox 3b5pre. The Acid2 test results are below: (and yes, the nose turned blue when I hovered the mouse over it on the first two results).
Firefox 3b5pre
Opera 9.5 beta
IE 8.0 beta
Whoa! Now wait a minute. Wasn’t it announced on the IE Blog way back in December that IE 8.0 passed the Acid2 test? Why yes, I believe they did. So why the failed result above I wonder? Well, it could be due to the info in this comment left by Chris Phillips left at the Ajaxian. I think I remember reading about this back then.
I wonder if IE8 passed a working Acid2 test:
http://www.hixie.ch/tests/evil/acid/002/Or the broken Acid2 test:
http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.htmlAcid2 on the webstandards site is broken because it uses an invalid embedded link that is returning 200 instead of 404.
Source: IE 8 now doesn’t trip on Acid
Yup! I remember now. At the time the IE developers ran their new baby through the test it was “broken” and for all those watching, it passed the test. If anyone is running IE 8.0 beta, give the 2 links a try and you’ll see for yourself.
Tomorrow I’ll run these beta’s through the dreaded Acid3 Test and see what kind of results I get. I can already tell it ain’t gonna be pretty.
Tags: Acid tests, browser wars
Comments 2
IE8 does in fact pass the official test (I’d imagine it’s fixed now, since both FF3 and IE8 display it properly). It doesn’t pass any copies of it because of some security things, see here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/03/05/why-isn-t-ie8-passing-acid2.aspx
Posted 24 Mar 2008 at 8:43 pm ¶Hi Matt and welcome,
Ah, I stand corrected then and I went digging in the official site and found the Acid2 test located in a sidebar under “Action”. Thanks for clearing that up. Not often I’m fooled like that.
Posted 25 Mar 2008 at 9:06 am ¶Post a Comment