Does IE8 Really Pass Acid2? [Updated]

thevirtualcat found some inconsistencies in IE8's Acid2 results that made him wonder what's going on. Can anyone replicate these results or, better yet, explain them?
Update: 03/22 23:54 GMT by KD : Several readers pointed out this has to do with cross-site scripting prevention, as described here.

Re:The answer...

[26199]

In a word, no.

Next anti-Microsoft flame, please?

This is not a security problem, per se.

[WK2]

IE8 has a problem initiating fallback content when a resource can not be acquired. This is exactly what this particular part of the acid2 test is meant to test, fallback code. The fact is, that IE8's fallback behavior works correctly in some cases, but not in others. Specifically, the fallback code works if the failed to acquire resource is supposed to be on the same domain as the acid2 test, whereas if they are on different domains, IE8's code fails to behave properly.

The fact that the blog writer mentions security is a red herring. While it is true that this does have something to do with security code, the real problem is that the fallback behavior is poor.

Simple stuff like CSS

[Cruciform]

I was kind of hoping that IE8 would at least be more compatible with CSS as I possess only basic HTML skills and find it a huge pain to try and make things look similar in multiple browsers by using javascript hacks and other crap.

But even the most basic CSS like

margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;

to center a DIV doesn't work in IE8 while it works great in Firefox.
Maybe I just read the wrong HTML/CSS tutorial sites but it would be nice if they rendered things consistently.

Re:I smell bullshit at the IE blog

[Anonymous Coward]

They said that their implementation uses ActiveX to handle HTML in OBJECT tags. They weren't saying the test was using an ActiveX control.

Also, it was not an excuse, it is a reasonable security measure. Frankly, most web developers are far too reckless about security. Rule #1 of secure programming: be as paranoid as you can, and then be more paranoid. If you don't think that every user is out to get you, then you're not being paranoid enough.

You obviously didn't comprehend what you read. :)

Re:On another note... Acid3

[ben there...]

Notice they have a "Task Force" for testing Microsoft, but no such group for Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc.

Not that surprising, really. There are entire websites [positioniseverything.net] devoted to helping web designers hack around IE bugs. If only a single browser could pass Acid2 and Acid3, ideally that browser would be IE. It's used by the most people, so you must design around its flaws. Not to mention, if that were to happen, Firefox and Opera would do everything possible to catch up immediately. Then we wouldn't have to hack around any browser's flaws.

Microsoft Has Lost The Race

[Whuffo]

Microsoft continues to trumpet their excellence but their products don't preform as they claim. Look at Vista; piece of crap. Sure, they're selling a bunch of copies - mostly pre-installed copies on new computers and a few more from people who want the latest and greatest from Redmond. The majority of their market has decided to stay well away from Vista.

Internet Explorer is losing ground to Firefox, so they come out with a new version and claim that it meets standards and works better. Nope, it's just more of their marketing spin.

The real problem is that Microsoft has lost sight of the goal. They're supposed to be producing software that meets the needs and desires of their customers, but they're busily producing software that's only intended to further their goal of "world domination". Their marketing department is busy trying to make that pig look like a swan, but it's not working.

Too bad that Linux distributions aren't quite "there" yet - close, but not yet. This is a golden opportunity for a real competitor...

Re:Cross-domain == cross-site

[Jerome H]

"carte blanche"
Please... don't use an expression that you don't understand.

Re:Yes, that's true.

[Bogtha]

Acid3 was recently released so that people have new standards to meet.

Acid3 isn't a standard, it's a set of tests for specifications that have already existed for years. Acid3 didn't make Firefox less compliant, it merely pointed out ways in which Firefox was already non-compliant.

Re:Simple stuff like CSS

[Anonymous Coward]

How does something patently and demonstrably false get modded +4 Insightful?

Re:It's a massive improvement...

[Bodero]

As an aside, think how good MS Office might be if they had this level of competition due to having to implement a proper Open Document standard not specified by them. Everyone would get more work done, would be fitter, happier, healthier and better, and Microsoft would probably still have the lion's share of the market.

What the fuck? Yeah, I know I'd gain at least 3 hours per week in productivity if Office used a standard XML format than its current implementation.

...Where do people come up with this stuff?

Re:The answer...

[VGPowerlord]

I disagree. It should fall back to the data url when loading the other object failed. Not only that, but the HTML standard agrees with me [w3.org] on this:

If the user agent is not able to render the object for whatever reason (configured not to, lack of resources, wrong architecture, etc.), it must try to render its contents.

and

One significant consequence of the OBJECT element's design is that it offers a mechanism for specifying alternate object renderings; each embedded OBJECT declaration may specify alternate content types. If a user agent cannot render the outermost OBJECT, it tries to render the contents, which may be another OBJECT element, etc.

Re:It's a massive improvement...

[marm]

Because the file format limitations are what (at least as far as I can see) are what keep the competitors from being viable alternatives.

I'm an IT manager by trade. I don't care who provides my company with software or what platform it runs on, as long as the business I provide IT for benefits from it and it is cost-effective, ideally giving me an advantage over my company's own competitors. The changes in UI between MS Office XP (which they're mostly using now), 2003 and especially 2007 are big enough that I have to retrain my users to use them, and frankly the cost of training my users to use 2007 is enough that I've been seriously considering moving them to OpenOffice.org.

However, the lack of a properly standardized file format prevents me from doing that. I have experimented with OOo with some of my users, and the biggest complaint (once I have trained them up a bit in OOo) I have is that .doc documents they are sent frequently don't look or print right, or they don't look right on the receiving end. If they can cope with that, I have found OOo gives me fewer support calls, primarily because the text rendering engine in OO Writer is more predictable than that in MS Word. Every few days I have to send someone to look at a user's Word document because the formatting does not work as they expect, particularly if the document contains columns or per-paragraph margins. In OO writer, those same documents behave exactly as expected. I can't understand how MS Word has got it wrong for so long - the bugs I see in Office XP are exactly the same in 2007. OO.org does it right, MS Word doesn't, and the only reason I can't reduce those support calls is that my users expect to be able to import and export external documents perfectly each time. There are similar issues with OO Calc vs. Excel also, particularly with regards to external data sources that Excel seems to forget about with no rhyme or reason, but which OO Calc gets right all the time, every time.

I know from experience with KOffice that I get better import - pretty much spot-on for the fairly complex documents my users create - from that into OO.org as ODF than I do Word documents into OO.org, so there must be something good about having a properly standardized file format. My conclusion therefore is that if MS Office had to support ODF, then MS would be forced to fix the bugs in Word and Excel rather than rely on their proprietary file format to keep competitors out and ignore the problems.

This is a similar situation with IE8 finally fixing long-standing bugs in order to pass the Acid 2 test, which is only possible by HTML and CSS being properly standardized.