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Comments: 261 +- Technology: Acid3 Race In Full Swing, Opera Overtakes Safari on Wednesday March 26 2008, @03:43PM
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enemi writes "Just a few days after Safari released version 3.1, Opera employee David Storey writes on his blog that they've overtaken Apple's browser in the Acid3 test. In the race to be the first to reach the reference rendering, Opera's software leads now with 98%, closely following by Safari with 96% and Firefox 3 beta 4 with 71%. He also noted the implemented features will not make a public appearance in the following weeks, because they are getting close to releasing Opera 9.5. That version has been under public testing since September and the new CSS3 color modes and font rendering features might further delay this. They will probably show the score in a preview build soon and wait for a post 9.5 stable build to release the new features to the public." Update: 03/26 21:21 GMT by Z : Opera is now at 100%, apparently, with Safari close behind at 98%.
Update: 03/27 by J : Public build r31356 of WebKit (Safari's rendering engine) is at 100%.
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Competition - gotta love it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Standards - gotta love em (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember the days when websites would yell at you telling you that you needed to use a certain version of an OS, with a certain version of a certain browser, with the latest pre-alpha VRML plugin and 1024x768 resolution?
Now, you don't even need a computer to browse the web.
That is progress.
I use Safari at home and Firefox at work (both with flash blockers), and I can do anything.
Back when Microsoft tried to take over the web, I had many issues with many sites. I don't remember the last problem I've had viewing a website.
And this is without government regulation or anything.
Next up, standards for multimedia on the web.
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Re:Standards - gotta love em (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say the antitrust case, even though just a slap on the wrist, did slow MS down and that is one of the reasons that the internet has improved.
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too late (Score:5, Informative)
Re:too late (Score:4, Informative)
http://webkit.org/blog/ [webkit.org]
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Re:too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Until I can browse and see 100/100 on my screen, I don't see it as too late. 98/100 is the highest I've seen when browsing http://acid3.acidtests.org/ [acidtests.org]
Apparently Duke Nukem Forever is a great game, too...
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Re:too late (Score:4, Insightful)
Safari 3.1 is a full release, and Firefox is a publicly available beta release. In my book Opera is losing the race. The race is silly, but Opera is still losing.
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Re:too late (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of the things that the Acid tests check for aren't necessary for day to day web browsing. And some of them like the 3d aren't used at all for simple things like email, and basic dynamic content.
Sure, I'd rather have a browser that supports all of the standards, but realistically if the browser supports things that I don't need, it's unlikely that I'll ever notice.
Old News :) (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Old News :) (Score:5, Insightful)
Just to be clear, reaching 100/100 is not equal to passing Acid 3.
Opera has not currently made any claims about the animation smoothness that i have seen, and the screenshot is still missing a space after the first comma. Obviously reaching the 100/100 goal is great progress but they are not quite across the finish line yet.
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Is anyone else concerned about the 'hacks' ? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with races is that the teams do almost anything just to cross the finish line faster. The speed at which the browsers seem to be gaining acid3 compatibility is frankly worrying me. Any developer worth his salt knows that browsers are huge and complex applications and every change must be discussed, designed and implemented properly as to not impact something else and be modular, be properly commented and be clean and well written code.
Also, Acid3 is just about the corner cases, and might not reflect the full standard completely. So a browser can pass the test and still suck at implementing standards, though passing the test is good step. It's just that the high speed of the compatibility improvements for ACID3 in almost all the mainstream browsers screams of hackathon coding sessions to get those few points a day till 100 so that there can be a marketing and PR blitz rather than properly planned programming. I think there is a very good chance of the code containing hacks and workarounds and also tons of security loopholes because of the insane speed at which features are being thrown into the code.
I think there is a very good chance of the new code containing hacks and workarounds and also tons of security loopholes because of the insane speed at which 'features' are being thrown into the code just to make headlines. Being a programmer, I am sure that non-trivial portions of the code will have to be rewritten later. Haste makes waste.
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Re:Is anyone else concerned about the 'hacks' ? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is anyone else concerned about the 'hacks' ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you have any evidence for this?
No, browsers aren't actually all that large (the rendering engines for the Opera desktop browser and the mobile browser are the same), and you don't have to painstakingly discuss absolutely everything. Nothing would ever get done.
It's true that rushing to meet one goal can cause regressions elsewhere; that is what regression tests are for. And I don't know about Opera, but Safari/Webkit has plenty of them [webkit.org].
So this is actually just wild-ass speculation and not something you have solid reasons to believe?
Yes, Safari and Opera are both moving fast. Extremely fast compared with Firefox and Internet Explorer. But that is because they are much smaller codebases. Gecko is huge and crufty. Changing one thing can have knock-on effects all over the place. Internet Explorer has three very different rendering engines attempting to remain compatible with years-old intranet applications.
One of the reasons Apple chose KHTML instead of Gecko for Safari was that it was much smaller and had a cleaner design. And that choice has paid off in spades, the turnaround on new features and functionality is extremely quick.
Opera have been focusing on the mobile market for a long time now, it's a core part of their business and a substantial portion of their revenue, so they've always kept the code small and manageable.
What you are seeing here are not crazy hacks, but the consequences of years of savvy architectural and management decisions. When you invest in clean design up-front, the cost of efforts like this is vastly reduced.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, http://trac.webkit.org/projects/webkit/changeset/31322 [webkit.org] would be a change which special-cases one particular font for different handling from all other fonts because that font happens to be the one Acid3 uses.
Either the thing that's being done with all the other fonts is OK (and the test is wrong, and there should be no need to special case) or the thing being done with all the other fonts is not OK, and this is a crazy hack...
This is not to say that all
Re:Is anyone else concerned about the 'hacks' ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Firstly, that tarball is a SVN working copy and includes such things as Bugzilla and other Webkit-related websites/web applications, testcases, etc. Deleting the Subversion directories alone drops the uncompressed size by a gig from ~1.4GB to ~400MB. Deleting most of the testcases drops that ~400MB to ~100MB. Deleting the websites drops that ~100MB to ~80MB. So you see the actual source code for Webkit only comprises about 5% of the archive, and there's a bunch of testcases and support tools I missed removing there.
Secondly, I didn't say that Safari is "not all that large". I said that browsers are not all that large. Download, for example, KDE, and see how small a part of it Konqueror is. You were characterising developing a browser as this monumental effort that required a special, painstakingly slow development approach. In reality, there are far larger codebases that are worked on at a much faster rate by many more people, with way less communication. Browsers really aren't anything special in this regard.
Thirdly, it's not just my claim about the relative sizes of the codebases. Check out the announcements (1 [kde.org] and 2 [kde.org]) explaining the reasons for going with KHTML:
Do you think Webkit is ten times the size it was then? Or do you think Gecko is ten times smaller than it was then?
Ahem isn't a real font. It's a dummy font [hixie.ch] that only has four glyphs and weird sizing. Its glyphs need to have very specific dimensions in order for the test to be accurate. Turning off font smoothing for this font in particular is enforcing those very specific font metrics. Yes, it looks like a hack, but that's far from the whole truth. In the real world, users that change their font sizes would also cause "failures" like this; the specific font metrics of the Ahem font are assumed by the test for accurate results. At worst, you could say it's a hack to set up the necessary conditions for the Acid3 test to run. These font metrics aren't part of the Acid3 test, they are a prerequisite for accurate results.
Bug 17086 [webkit.org] is the bug you should be looking at for background. The question is whether or not antialiasing/font smoothing should have an effect on font metrics or if it should be clipped. It may turn out that the Acid3 test is updated to make this a non-issue.
Here you go misrepresenting your guesses as actual fact again. If you don't know the details, don't make accusations like that. Should antialiasing/font smoothing increase the size of text slightly or is that a bug? That's a difficult question to ans
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Re:Is anyone else concerned about the 'hacks' ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Opera have said that they get 100/100, but they are not yet claiming victory. They are fixing a brand new implementation, that will be released 'soon', when it is ready. I imagine that the release will involve a ton of regression testing and code quality analysis.
Likewise Safari has various standards [webkit.org] that the code has to adhere to. Reading the Webkit blog entries so far I get the feeling that it has not been enough merely to pass a test; there has been extensive consideration the best way to fix the code.
Yes, it's a race, but not at any cost, and the goal is not to just pass Acid3, it's to deliver a better browser.
Thus far, I'm optimistic that Acid3 is improving the overall code quality of the participating browsers.
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Re:Is anyone else concerned about the 'hacks' ? (Score:5, Insightful)
you know the right side is a boolean expression, and that you are assigning the result of the expression to the left.
in fact, it is actually more clear, and less error prone to do it the first way - there is never an opportinity to "accidently" assign the wrong boolean value to the variable where as in the second case it is up to the programmer to properly interpret the boolean comparison and assign the proper outcome to the variable.
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Re:Is anyone else concerned about the 'hacks' ? (Score:4, Insightful)
In the first example, you're expressing a relationship between two variables in one line, containing one assignment and one comparison. In the second, you are using one comparison, two assignments and branch. It's less efficient, and the relationship isn't as explicit.
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Re:shameful (Score:4, Informative)
It's not the outrageous hack you think it is. Ahem is a dummy font that needs to have specific sizing in order for Acid3 to give accurate results. If Ahem doesn't have the specific size assumed by the Acid3 test, that means Acid3 can't give accurate results, not that Acid3 failed. So the Webkit developers disabled font smoothing for that specific font so that Acid3 could give accurate results, not to cheat. This isn't cheating because Acid3 isn't testing the font size, it's assuming the font size. It doesn't make sense to test the font size because that's volatile in real world conditions anyway.
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Actually... (Score:5, Informative)
First equal, actually (Score:3, Informative)
Either way, it's us punters who are enjoying the fruits of this competition :-)
Shoot.. (Score:5, Funny)
http://acid3.acidtests.org/reference.html [acidtests.org]
Does public release matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The Next Milestone (Score:5, Insightful)
The next major milestone though, right after "X Achieves 100% compatibility in nightly builds" is "X releases version X of browser to the masses/into the wild, capable of passing Acid3 test".
Passing it "in the lab" is one thing, declaring it in a build "ready for release" is another.
Re:The Next Milestone (Score:5, Insightful)
Either way, the consumer wins. The faster development builds get it right, the faster it will end up in a shipping, public release, build.
Lets give the developers all the motivation we can to get this to happen. If that means a pissing contest of nightly builds, let 'em go for it, I say.
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Someone better get a move on... (Score:5, Funny)
Who cares who's first? (Score:3, Insightful)
What do I care who's first? What I care about is who has the best browser that complies with standards. That may also include render speed, stability, javascript compatibility, security, or whatever. "Who's first" is about the thing I care about the least.
Incorrect update (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks like someone wasn't reading what they were writing. The links are right though.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But I REALLY want to know is, How is Safari doing?
Safari vs. Safari (Score:5, Funny)
That's good, but don't get too carried away (Score:3, Interesting)
However, this falls into the "Firefox does Acid 2" category. Until this is done with the release version of the browser, it's a nice thing, but not really available to the average web user. (Cue the witticisms from the "hyuck, hyuck - well Opera users aren't average - either of them" crowd.)
This is a good thing. Opera has been a company which has been dedicated to (among other things like speed, security and innovations in the interface) support for web standards. This is just another step in that direction.
Kudos to the desktop crew for this accomplishment.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What about IE? (Score:4, Insightful)
IE8 is still puttering around with ACID2...so I hate to sound like the cynic...
Re:What about IE? (Score:5, Funny)
But, in order to get that remarkable achievement, you might need to use it in conjunction with MS Excel 2007...
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I'll probably burn in karma-land for this (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, I realize that Opera zealotry is as fervent as the worst Mac fans, and loses nothing to the Nikon/Canon camps; but really - the installed base is tiny. When I look at my site stats, Opera doesn't even show up (and even Netscape 4.x still has a tiny sliver of the pie). So I'm not sure even the "competition is good for everyone" argument particularly applies here.
Re:I'll probably burn in karma-land for this (Score:5, Informative)
First off, Opera use is large enough for the company to survive on revenue from Google from the search bar(just like FireFox). I've seen figures of 1 to 2% of use, and when you factor in the huge number of web surfers, ~1% is nothing to sneeze at.
That's pretty narrow minded thinking. Many of the features in Firefox and and it's extensions are Opera innovations or it was the first browser to have a good implementation. You can see some of the innovations here [operawiki.info]. Of course, Opera has taken some cues from Firefox too, but I think it's safe to say that all the browsers have benefited because of the existence of Opera. Hence, it's not 'irrelevant' just because there are hardly any hits from Opera on your site. Many of the features you enjoy in Firefox have their root in Opera.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If even the two Opera users that there are* can keep Firefox on their toes, and by extension Microsoft and Apple, then everybody wins.
*In this thread at least, those two Opera users appear to be myself and whitelarker. For me and the way I browse, Firefox doesn't even come close, but I believe the point of this addendum, Acid $integer tests and Firefox is and always has been that whatever browser the user is using
Sorry to sound like a zealot, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
The "zealotry" is answer to unfair dissing of Opera. The company is working really hard on their browser and promotion of web standards, and yet from the general public all they get is "x%? I don't give a shit".
In the US the browser alone might not be directly relevant, but Opera Software influenced the market quite a bit: IE8 was released soon after Opera filed complaint to EU and IE8's big news is passing Opera CTO's Acid2 test. Opera taken lead role in WHATWG and started implementing [X]HTML5. Before that W3C didn't consider any major revisions of HTML4 or XHTML1.
They really deserve some more respect.
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100/100 Doesn't Mean Much If Pages Don't Render (Score:4, Insightful)
I also know there are places where Safari simply renders pages illegibly. I've seen this on Joomla forums where Safari cannot render the boxes on top of a forum post correctly (see for an example. Here "home", "threaded views", "home", and "help" are not rendered correctly in Safari.
I know most of this has to do with non-standard behavior first instituted by Microsoft (who else), but IE represents about 80% of the browser market, so when Microsoft creates a standard like Midas/DocumentMode, it becomes an important part of the Web. FireFox and Opera have no problems with this. Unfortunately, Safari, the browser that hews so closely to WC3 standards simply cannot be used on many websites.
Wait! This just in... (Score:5, Informative)
What's more, since WebKit is released nightly, WebKit is the first publicly released browser to score 100/100 on the Acid 3 tests.
BTW, as both teams will point out, scoring 100/100 on the Acid3 test doesn't mean the browser "passed" the Acid3 test. It has to match the reference page pixel for pixel and its rendering has to be smooth. Opera is off by a couple of pixels in its rendering. WebKit is pixel-perfect, but Test 26 takes too long to complete.
And, Opera could still be the first officially released non-beta browser to score 100/100 on the Acid3 test.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Safari gets 96%? (Score:5, Informative)
WebKit nightly builds. Just go to http://nightly.webkit.org/ [webkit.org], download, and run. It currently gets 96%, tomorrow's will get 98% or better.
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Re:Update: (Score:4, Funny)
Um, Zonk?
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Most developers are concentrating on getting Firefox 3.0 finished right now. I don't know if people have tried to do too much or if the schedule was too optimistic, but some important features have had difficult getting polished up in time. Just today I read on the changelog that cross-site XHR has been removed, and there's a high chance it won't make it into Firefox 3.0.
But Opera is also dealing with that, and they're doing a lot better. The bigger r
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You're talking about bugs that cause your application to crash or destructively malfunction in some way. ACID tests bugs that might cause the menu to be 3 pixels further left than you want it. And the funny part is that as long as all browsers have difference, you'll STILL need to test on all browsers (for JS issues alone if nothing else), so you'll notice the ACID-type bugs long before putting the site live.
Sorry, I think these ACID tests are near-useless.