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First Look At the ACID3 Browser Test

Posted by kdawson on Fri Jan 11, 2008 09:42 AM
from the turn-on-tune-in-render dept.
The Internet IT
ddanier writes "Now that all major browsers have mastered the ACID2 test (at least in some preview versions), work on ACID3 has begun. The new test will focus on ECMAScript, DOM Level 3, Media Queries, and data: URLs. 100 tests will be put into functions each returning either true or false depending on the result of the test. The current preview of ACID3 is still missing 16 tests."
+ -
story

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notamicrosoftlover writes to tell us Channel9 is reporting that Internet Explorer 8 has correctly rendered the Acid2 page in "standards mode". "With respect to standards and interoperability, our goal in developing Internet Explorer 8 is to support the right set of standards with excellent implementations and do so without breaking the existing web. This second goal refers to the lessons we learned during IE 7. IE7's CSS improvements made IE more compliant with some standards and less compatible with some sites on the web as they were coded. Many sites and developers have done special work to work well with IE6, mostly as a result of the evolution of the web and standards since 2001 and the level of support in the various versions of IE that pre-date many standards. We have a responsibility to respect the work that sites have already done to work with IE. We must deliver improved standards support and backwards compatibility so that IE8 (1) continues to work with the billions of pages on the web today that already work in IE6 and IE7 and (2) makes the development of the next billion pages, in an interoperable way, much easier. We'll blog more, and learn more, about this during the IE8 beta cycle." There's also a video interview regarding IE8 development on Channel9."
Submission: First details on ACID3 by ddanier (1217264)
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First Look At the ACID3 Browser Test 50 Comments More /

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  • From the summary: (Score:5, Funny)

    by u-bend (1095729) on Friday January 11 2008, @09:46AM (#21998784) Homepage Journal

    Te new test...
    Shouldn't that be Teh new test...?
  • Finally, the bigger browsers are ACID2 compatible now. But suddenly those fuckers release a new ACID test. Now everybody's standard incompatible again. Let's see who succesfully implements ACID3 first.

  • Various Scores (Score:5, Informative)

    by The MAZZTer (911996) <megazzt AT gmail DOT com> on Friday January 11 2008, @09:58AM (#21998970) Homepage

    Final scores of course are subject to change on the final test:

    • Firefox 3 beta 2 @ Windows XP: 62%*
    • Internet Explorer 7 @ Windows XP: Dear God... you need to try it yourself. Viewing the generated source is needed to see the result is 24%
    • Opera 9.5 build 9721 @ Windows XP: 65%
    • lynx and elinks @ Windows XP: No JavaScript support. :(
    • Opera 9.3 @ Wii: 61%
    • Opera 8.5 @ Nintendo DS: 1%

    * - script takes long enough to run that browser prompts you to kill it.

    • Re:Various Scores (Score:5, Informative)

      by mzs (595629) on Friday January 11 2008, @10:01AM (#21999030)
      Safari 3.0.3 on Mac OS X 10.5.1 does 50%. It does not have the little colored squares as in the reference though.

    • Re:Various Scores (Score:5, Informative)

      by Laebshade (643478) <laebshade@gmail.com> on Friday January 11 2008, @10:21AM (#21999326)
      lynx and elinks @ Windows XP: No JavaScript support. :(

      I don't know what versions you're using, but at least for elinks (and links), they both support javascript. Just has to be compiled in.

      eix elinks
      * www-client/elinks
                Available versions: 0.11.2 0.11.2-r1 0.11.3 {X bittorrent bzip2 debug finger ftp gopher gpm guile idn ipv6 javascript lua nls nntp perl ruby ssl unicode zlib}
                Homepage: http://elinks.or.cz/ [elinks.or.cz]
                Description: Advanced and well-established text-mode web browser

      eix ^links$
      [I] www-client/links
                Available versions: (2) 2.1_pre26 2.1_pre28-r1
                      {X directfb fbcon gpm javascript jpeg livecd png sdl ssl svga tiff unicode}
                Installed versions: 2.1_pre28-r1(2)(21:18:19 11/07/07)(javascript ssl tiff unicode -X -directfb -fbcon -gpm -jpeg -livecd -png -sdl -svga)
                Homepage: http://links.twibright.com/ [twibright.com]
                Description: links is a fast lightweight text and graphic web-browser

      So while they do support javascript, they don't support iframes, and the test uses 3 of those.
    • Firefox 2.0.0.11 on Windows XP: 59%
    • Generic Web Browser @ PS3: 34% ... no little reference boxes though, so YMMV.
    • Well, for IE6 it reports 100% of the standards as I can prove here [imageshack.us]! In your face Firefox!
    • Opera 9.12 on OLPC (One Laptop Per Child): 55%

    • Re:Various Scores (Score:4, Informative)

      by Dak RIT (556128) on Friday January 11 2008, @11:20AM (#22000188) Homepage

      Safari 3.0.4 on Windows using WebKit-r29380 (today's nightly build), Safari scores a 70/100.

  • Safari 3.0.4 (Windows) hangs at 60, Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.11 messes up so badly the result can't be read...

    The test looks interesting, for sure. And it's going to raise the game for standards compliance!

  • Where is the reference image from? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Aaron Isotton (958761) on Friday January 11 2008, @10:08AM (#21999116)
    Something I always wanted to know (applies to the older Acid tests, too): how do they render the reference image? Is someone creating them by hand? How do we know no mistake was made when creating the reference image?

    • Re:Where is the reference image from? (Score:5, Funny)

      by patio11 (857072) on Friday January 11 2008, @10:19AM (#21999300)
      It's created by an advanced, custom-built browser which, for certain input, correctly renders a perfectly standards-compliant reference image. Just don't ask to use the browser on any other input.
      • I'm glad I don't have mod points, at the moment.

        I don't know if you're trying to be Funny(sarcastic) or Informative.
        • He has a point - most browsers around are designed to cope with the non-standard/flawed/broken crap that passes for some websites these days. Use a standards compliant browser which does not make a best guess at working out what was really meant and rejects any errors you'll have problems with alot of sites.

    • Re:Where is the reference image from? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by thue (121682) on Friday January 11 2008, @10:30AM (#21999442) Homepage
      How do we know no mistake was made when creating the reference image?

      You don't

      I remember an article by the Apple guy who made ACID2 work on Safari (I think this was the first browser to make it work). One of the steps to get it working was to fix a bug in the test, when he couldn't make the reference result fit with what the test HTML said.

      • Re:Where is the reference image from? (Score:5, Informative)

        by gsnedders (928327) on Friday January 11 2008, @10:42AM (#21999654) Homepage
        Yeah, it was David Hyatt who was working on getting Saf to pass (and got it to be the first browser to pass in any build, and the first to have a generally available release (i.e., a non-development build, even if public) -- the latter being the only thing that truly counts for passing the test).

        http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2005_04.html#008011 [mozillazine.org] details the bug (in this case, it was the test itself that was wrong -- not the reference). The reference rendering for Acid3 is likely correct as the actual rendering isn't overly complex (the complexity is in the ECMAScript and DOM support), though with the complexity of some tests there could easily be bugs in the test again.
    • That is a question of Faith

      You're not supposed to question Faith
  • Are you telling me Firefox isn't a major browser? I just tried Acid2 on my FF 2.0.0.1.1 on Windows and it still looks like crap. How far behind is it?

    • Re:So.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Arimus (198136) on Friday January 11 2008, @10:47AM (#21999734)
      Firefox is a major browser, however the version which passes ACID2 is Firefox 3, I think the first build which passed was around this time last year so either go with the development release (FF3 is currently in Beta).

  • ECMAScript, DOM Level 3 (Score:3, Informative)

    by QuietLagoon (813062) on Friday January 11 2008, @10:55AM (#21999836)
    Excellent. These two, especially, need to be tightened up (and in some cases, fixed) across the browsers.

  • Now that all major browsers have mastered the ACID2 test (at least in some preview versions) [...]

    When Firefox makes news on this there are daily builds to test, source code to inspect and compile. One can see the progress first-hand.

    There is no build of Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 to test. You are accepting something unverifiable as reality and thus talking about these browsers as if they're all on the same level. This suggests a new low: believing the illegal monopolist who tells you that their vaporware behaves in accordance with published publicly-implementable standards.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by roggg (1184871)

      It was pointed out by Dykstra i think, that tests can reveal the presence of errors, but never their absence. So testing is in some sense a pointless pursuit.
      I got your missing the point right here. It's not necessary to prove the absence of errors. Developers use the presence of errors (and knowledge of those errors) to direct efforts at improving products. In what sense is discovering errors a pointless pursuit?

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by bunratty (545641)
          That would be pointless. If browsers are getting mere hacks to display the specific acid test page correctly, the jig will be up when web developers start using the features tested by that acid test and discover that the features don't really work. I suspect that no browsers have been tweaked to pass certain tests, as that tweaking wouldn't fool web developers for any significant period of time.

    • Yes, testing can never prove a program correct. On the other hand, do you think you'd get anywhere trying to prove that anything about any browser is correct using formal methods? Especially when the source code for most browsers is not even publicly available.

      The Acid tests are also not really about finding obscure bugs, but about demonstrating which basic features work and which ones do not work. After all major browsers pass an Acid test, web developers can attempt to use the features tested by the Acid

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