Wednesday, December 13th, 2006
Firefox 3.0: Passes Acid 2 CSS Test
Category: Firefox
Ars Technica has a nice look at Firefox 3.0 now that alphas and nightly builds are rolling out.
The reflow improvements in Gecko 1.9 (included in the latest Gran Paradiso nightly build, but not the alpha release) finally enable Firefox to pass the Acid 2 test, a CSS test case developed by the Web Standards Project to illuminate flaws in HTML/CSS rendering engines. To pass the Acid 2 test, browsers must comply with W3C standards and provide support for a wide variety of features that are considered relevant by Web designers. The Acid 2 test has been passed by several other browsers, including Safari, Konqueror, and Opera, but not Internet Explorer. Passing Acid 2 is considered to be a significant milestone in Firefox development.
We probably won’t be seeing the new JavaScript VM until Gecko 2.0 / Mozilla 2.0 which is inline for Firefox 4.0, but who knows. Maybe this timeline changes with the Adobe donation?
well lol if only the rating tool also worked ;)
YAY! This makes me so excited!! I’ve been wondering when they would finally pass ACID2. I can’t believe they let Konqueror, Safari, and Opera beat them…
Sweet! I can’t wait!
I don’t know why people place so much importance on passing the Acid2 test. I’d rather my browser work with real world websites. If it works with the crazy worst-case scenario webpages, great, but I don’t care. Firefox (and Opera, and Safari) all do a great job at rendering standards compliant web pages. They all have room for growth.
Maybe it’s just been a rough day at work. Maybe I’m just stuck with IE6. ;)
Pragmatically yours,
Jason right from the WaSP ACID2 test website:
“Acid2 is a test page, written to help browser vendors ensure proper support for web standards in their products.”
So if you want browsers to follow standards you will want to pass a test that uses the features that the standards dictate. Then in the “real world” those browsers and others will “do a great job”.
And a side note, Mac OSX version of GranParadiso looks like the 2nd graphic in the post smilies.
Wow, I can’t believe how nieve some people are in this area of web development.
Having all browsers display standards properly ensures web designers that their work will look the same on all platforms when properly coded.
I have had major problems getting Firefox and Internet explorer to coordinate and cooperate properly, this brings development one more step forward away from these nightmares.
You should specify that the version of Firefox that passed the acid2 test is a Firefox 3.0 nightly build !!
“And a side note, Mac OSX version of GranParadiso looks like the 2nd graphic in the post smilies.”
Firefox 3.0 alpha 1 (GranParadiso) doesn’t pass the acid2 test. it is the second result.
The first result is Firefox 2.0
I sympathize with Jason and I don’t get what you others are all buffed up about. At the moment there are 2 main browsers that have to be targeted and you can do what you like with the rest. Adding new browsers; IE7, FF3, that behave differently than the existing browsers and differently to each other increases the difficulty. More, different browsers increases the difficulty. It hardly matters why they’re different. Jesus himself could tell us what a browser should do, but if it adds another different browser to the mix it’s still a bad idea.
in response to Ex Ample:
but isnt that the whole point of standards? It shouldnt matter which browser you use, the page you are trying to view should look the same. FF3 (or IE7 for that matter) arent behaving differently; they are (slowly) beginning to behave CORRECTLY.
Having more browsers doesnt make things more difficult; having more browsers that dont follow standards is what makes things more difficult. ;-)
FireFox is the best browser ever. I can’t wait ’till it takes out IE out of the market so webdevelopers would get enough of sleep.
Opera get it first! ;)
While it’s nice to see FF continue to grow, while IE still does things differently my daily task is no different, indeed in some cases it may even make things worse.
I thought coding for FF 2.0 and IE6 was bad, then IE7 came into the mix as well, now FF 3.0?? One thing is for sure, FF users will upgrade, lots of IE users wont however… so I’m still coding for 3 browsers until Vista becomes ’standard’.
Go KONQUEROR!!
You’re right, TaintedWoods. Every browser developer should just issue a permanent release freeze. The future is just a myth anyway.
Safari beta (V.303) just passed the ACID test for me.
that was a shocker.
IE (3,4,5,5.5,6) and
Firefox 2.0 and older
looked like variations on July roadkill hit the page
Safari shows the reference rendered weird face as should be…
blown away.
IE blogged how they were asked if they would pass ACID or not.
They did not answer the question they brought up themselves.
/ Why is firefox not here yet?
As nice as passing the acid 2 test would be, it’s still a long way off from happening in a version that will take a significant portion of the market.
While it is very good to see these improvements being developed for the Gecko engine, usage statistics and Microsoft policy* show that we will still need to make our websites compensate for the inabilities for the Trident engine.
Ultimately this would only mean subsetting W3C compliant code once for Trident, instead of twice: once for Trident and once more for Gecko. Since subsetting for Gecko is easier than subsetting for Trident (and identical for a large portion of the unsupported W3C compliant code), the net impact of the Gecko engine passing the Acid2 test will not have a significant impact on responsible site developers, and only marginally decrease portion of W3C compliant code that is uncompliant among browsers with a significant market share.
I am really not concerned about any browser passing Acid2. But it would be nice that if this is such a important standard. That the web designers take note and design their freakin’ web sites to the standards. How about setting a web site standard tests?? Otherwise, who wants a web browser that passes all the tests, but works poorly on web sites? All is fine and good with Firefox until some bank site can’t be accessed because it’s IE friendly. That’s a great time to say to yourself. Oh but but my Firefox browser is Acid 2 friendly. Don’t get me wrong people. I like Firefox and how it has changed how we look at browsers. But give me a break on this Acid 2 stuff. If it don’t work with the web sites I need it too. Then all the tests it can pass don’t mean crap to me.