Acid3 Race In Full Swing, Opera Overtakes Safari 261
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%.
too late (Score:5, Informative)
Actually... (Score:5, Informative)
First equal, actually (Score:3, Informative)
Either way, it's us punters who are enjoying the fruits of this competition :-)
Re:Safari gets 96%? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:too late (Score:4, Informative)
http://webkit.org/blog/ [webkit.org]
Re:too late (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Does public release matter? (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.
Re:Is anyone else concerned about the 'hacks' ? (Score:2, Informative)
Like this?
.
261 if (isCustomFont()) {
262 RetainPtr fullName(AdoptCF, CGFontCopyFullName(m_font.cgFont()));
263 String nameStr(fullName.get());
264 m_allowFontSmoothing = (nameStr != "Ahem");
265 }
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.
Re:Firefox? (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 reason is that Mozilla has been planning a huge refactoring, called "Mozilla 2", for quite a while (e.g. exceptions in C++ code, which were previously forbidden). Many changes needed for Acid 3 are being put off due to that. So much stuff will be changing so drastically that many developers feel it would be a waste to make changes now that will just be ripped out again right after Firefox 3.0 ships.
Mozilla 2 is expected to take at least a year, maybe two or more, so Firefox has once again been caught at a bad time. The wait for a Firefox build that pases Acid 3 is going to be even longer than that for Acid 2. Hopefully Mozilla 2 will be clean and modern enough that future changes can occur more easily.
Also, a small part of of it may be due to Mozilla not accepting bullshit like this [webkit.org].
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.
Re:Does public release matter? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is anyone else concerned about the 'hacks' ? (Score:3, Informative)
And now WebKit is at 100/100 (Score:2, Informative)
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:shameful (Score:3, Informative)
Please read my comment again. This isn't about passing or not passing. If you don't meet the preconditions of the Acid3 test, then you simply don't know whether you passed or not because the results are inaccurate.
You could meet the preconditions another way — turn off font smoothing manually in your system settings and then take the Acid3 test. A bit inconvenient, don't you think?
They already talked about it before the fix was committed. See bug #17086 [webkit.org].