An internal build of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 passed the the Acid2 test. This is a great news for the developers, even if you are not a developer you will love this because IE8 will become standards complaint and you don’t have to code specifically for IE anymore.
For those who doesn’t know about Acid2 test here is quick explanation from wikipedia.
“Acid2 is a test case designed by the Web Standards Project to identify web page rendering flaws in browsers and authoring tools.
Acid2 employs certain features of HTML and, more prominently, CSS. The purpose of employing such features is to highlight the problems with browsers that do not display it correctly. The Acid2 test should render correctly on any browser that follows the W3C HTML and CSS 2.0 specifications. Any browser which does not correctly and completely support all of the features which Acid2 uses will not render the page correctly.”
Current browsers which pass this test are Safari, Mozilla Firefox 3 beta, Opera 9 (see for the full list here). Firefox 2 doesn’t pass the test. If you remember last week Opera complained to EU against Microsoft for not following web standards.
IE8 first public beta will be released sometime in the first half of 2008, it is not clear whether it supports XP and previous versions or only supports Vista.
I tested all my browsers against this test and i have included the results below.
I am excited about IE8 . I think it will definatily contain some advanced features.
Your title is incorrect. IE8 DOES NOT PASS THE ACID2 TEST. It cannot and will not.
What Microsoft shows is their browser “rendering” the smiley face of an offline doctored version of the Acid2 page. IE8 cannot pass the real online version of the test. More smoke and mirrors from Microsoft.
Firefox passes the real test. Opera passes the real test. No smoke. No mirrors. All fact.