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Opera 9.0 Fully Passes ACID2 Test
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Mar 12, 2006 10:06 AM
from the both-users-celebrate dept.
from the both-users-celebrate dept.
Rytis writes "Opera has just become the second browser after Safari to be able to pass completely the famous ACID2 test. Mark Wilton-Jones is running a little article on the history of the Opera and ACID tests. Of course, it includes a screenshot of Opera 9 showing the nice happy face saying "Hello world!"."
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First Look At the ACID3 Browser Test 104 comments
ddanier writes "Now that all major browsers have mastered the ACID2 test (at least in some preview versions), work on ACID3 has begun. The new test will focus on ECMAScript, DOM Level 3, Media Queries, and data: URLs. 100 tests will be put into functions each returning either true or false depending on the result of the test. The current preview of ACID3 is still missing 16 tests."
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Opera 9.0 Fully Passes ACID2 Test
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Konqueror passed 2nd (Score:4, Informative)
Info here [kdedevelopers.org].
Re:Konqueror passed 2nd (Score:5, Informative)
"Opera 9 (get the weekly build) now passes the Acid 2 test, making it the second browser to do so. And yes, I can count. Safari passed first, and Opera is second. Konqueror and iCab almost pass (and claim to pass), but they both fail to apply one of the styles required by the test..."
Re:Konqueror passed 2nd (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Konqueror passed 2nd (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Konqueror passed 2nd (Score:5, Insightful)
From your link:
"I want to be clear that our intent is to build a platform that fully complies with the appropriate web standards, in particular CSS 2 ( 2.1, once it's been Recommended)."
Its not really paraphrasing when you make up ideas. That's called "reading between the lines", and you didn't even do that.
Actually Firefox do care a lot about Acid2 (Score:5, Informative)
It's just such a complex problem to tuckle that it seems to me (as a sideline spectactor) to be stupid to block the entire Firefox train just for it. They are working on it.
Re:Konqueror passed 2nd (Score:4, Informative)
--
onedotzero
thedigitalfeed.co.uk [thedigitalfeed.co.uk]
Re:Konqueror passed 2nd (Score:5, Informative)
That's not a bug, that's exactly what is supposed to happen when you scroll the page. From the technical guide [webstandards.org]:
Re:Konqueror passed 2nd (Score:5, Informative)
From what I've read here, Konquerer still shows the scroll bar, and Opera doesn't have the scalp come off when you scroll.
So, Safari passes, everything else still got some work?
At least they all pass a hundred times better than IE...
Re:Konqueror passed 2nd (Score:5, Insightful)
Who got there first also isn't important, we just need all browsers to get there.
Re:Konqueror passed 2nd (Score:5, Insightful)
> of course, but in the real world practically nobody is going to be using CSS in that way.
It's not purely academic, it's eminently practical - as the site explains, all of the features are unlikely to be used on the same page, but designers rely on each one of them to work correctly at some point, and have been requesting proper support for years so their pages look consistently good on all browsers.
It claims to but fails (Score:5, Informative)
"Konqueror and iCab almost pass (and claim to pass), but they both fail to apply one of the styles required by the test, and as a result they display a scrollbar even though they shouldn't (the Acid 2 guide neglects to mention this style, but see the source code for the test itself):
html {
Re:Konqueror passed 2nd (Score:5, Informative)
Safari is an OSS project too.
No it isn't, WebKit, the rendering engine Safari uses, is an open source project. Safari itself is very much closed source.
WebKit matters, not the Safari frontend (Score:4, Insightful)
In a discussion about the Acid2 test, you claim that Safari isn't free software:
But the frontend code isn't very relevant to this discussion. Safari passes Acid2 if and only if [wikipedia.org] WebKit passes Acid2. Or do you claim that Apple maintains a private WebKit tree with patches that don't get released to the public and that one or more of the private patches is required for WebKit to pass Acid2?Re:WebKit matters, not the Safari frontend (Score:5, Interesting)
Not tested any others but I'm sure Xylescope, TextMate and OmniBrowser all use WebKit too.
Re:Konqueror passed 2nd (Score:5, Interesting)
But seriously, who gives a shit who came first, second or whatever; I think the important thing is that browser developers are obviously making an effort to ensure stricter standards compliance. I assume someone must be working on this for Firefox, so does anybody know when we can expect to see Firefox pass Acid2 as well?
Re:Konqueror passed 2nd (Score:4, Informative)
Track Gecko progress here. Including screenshots.
Link as plain text due to
ACID passed, real world? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ACID passed, real world? (Score:5, Informative)
The problems with Opera's JS arise in three situations:
1) The site specifically blocks out Opera due to scripts 5-6 years old, but happily copypasted throughout the web project by brainless "web designers". Or server-side sniffing, like Yahoo did and still does, AFAIK.
See here for example, one that I found just a few minutes ago when informing myself of the latest and greatest Bollywood hit: http://www.rangdebasanti.net/ [rangdebasanti.net]
Their JS code contains this:
Use Proxomitron or Opera's cloaking techniques to get rid of the "Opera" part in UA string, and what do you know, the site works perfectly!
2) The site doesn't block Opera per se, but exhibits "if IE or Netscape" behaviour. Of course Firefox deals with those, as it descends from Netscape. Opera doesn't, and Opera is not IE, either, so it end up in no man's land...
3) The site has JS errors, and Opera is pretty strict when parsing JS, more so than Firefox or IE.
Honestly, Opera does not have any JS issues. None whatsoever. It's brainless webmonkeys who have issues with their JavaScript.
Re:ACID passed, real world? (Score:5, Informative)
Moreover, it's a fallacy to expect a browser to "work in all situations". I'm sure there are plenty of real-world situations where Firefox fails as well, and where Safari were to succeed in it's place. It's tests like ACID2 that determine a browsers capability to handle all situations.
The problem Safari is having with Exchange is very likely due to poor coding. Considering it's from Microsoft (you said Exchange web interface, right?), I'm sure Microsoft implemented a slew of hacks to have Firefox compliance (Microsoft is well known for improper web developing practices, to put it lightly).
Re:ACID passed, real world? (Score:4, Insightful)
I haven't found that. Firefox is ahead on some things and behind on others. For example, Safari supports DOM 2 mutation events, but Firefox doesn't.
You're joking, right? Internet Explorer's DOM support is prone to memory leaks and doesn't support basic things like event handling. I'd rephrase your statement as:
"As Internet Explorer has shown, having the largest market share is much more important than supporting most of the CSS or DOM specifications, because that way the web developers work for you, not the other way around."
I think that a lot of people have blind spots, where they are completely unaware of many parts of the specifications, because they don't work in Internet Explorer or Firefox.
Re:ACID passed, real world? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:ACID passed, real world? (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't support event handling as defined by the DOM specifications. My comment is perfectly clear when you don't cut the quote off prematurely.
Referring to Internet Explorer's proprietary DHTML interface as a "DOM", while technically accurate, is misleading as in common use, the term "DOM" refers to the W3C specifications.
How about a little maturity?
a) No it doesn't, many Internet Explorer memory leaks [microsoft.com] are an artifact of the JScript engine being unable to refcount properly.
b) You implied that Internet Explorer had a "solid" DOM. That is not true regardless of the quality of Firefox's DOM. Internet Explorer's DOM doesn't get more "solid" if you distract people by talking about other browsers.
Re:ACID passed, real world? (Score:5, Informative)
First off that one hasn't been built, as I've seen IE manage to screw up royally too on sites claiming to work with IE, sometimes only with IE. The trouble with trying to match IE bug for bug is that you can't succeed as you can never duplicate the implementation exactly, you need to render pages wrong according to the standard, and worst of all it is never predictable. I really hate "trial-and-error" programming, and IE is the worst of the bunch.
In your case, you're trying to use MS generated HTML. I'm sure the fact that Firefox can render it is completely accidental and will be fixed in the next Exchange service pack. You can't expect a company that has a vested business interest in not playing nice, to play nice. The ACID2 test is an assurance that if I code to the standard, I will see none (or at least very few) rendering issues on any browser (except IE). That is very reassuring to people who think "OMG supporting five browsers, do I have to make 5x the number of hacks?" No, you don't. In fact, you'll code to one standard and fix hacks for one browser. Which is actually better than to code to zero standards and fix hacks for one browser...
Safari hates malformed pages (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a lot of crappy pages out there. If a page doesn't make it through the HTML validator why should anyone expect a browser to render it? Are your pages at work valid? What's the point of standards-compliant rendering engines if they all allow exceptions to the standard to be rendered?
A lot of times Safari won't render big chunks of web pages because of malformed markup [mozillazine.org]. Dave Hyatt (rightly, I believe) doesn't want to spend lots of coding effort dealing with error recovery when parsing sloppy web pages. Browsers like MSIE and Netscape (pre-Mozilla) are too permissive and have allowed people to get away with downright bad HTML.
That said, the Safari Compatibility Hit List [opendarwin.org] was recently created, to either fix Safari compatibility problems or to encourage sites to fix their markup.
Tweaked (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Tweaked (Score:4, Interesting)
The reason Opera is "victimised" by older scripts is due to the ridiculous decision of that company to add code stubs for functions it did not actually support (I remember when it had document.getElementById(), which always returned null - that's why many scripts look for the Opera string, and block it).
Get the weekly (Score:1, Informative)
ICab and Konquerer don't pass (Score:1, Redundant)
Good news (Score:4, Insightful)
A big well done to the Opera team. Safari passed the test in November last year, and hopefully Firefox will pass soon as well. Increased standards compliace is a Good Thing(tm) for users and webmasters alike. If the minority browsers continue to push standards (which the tech-savvy webmasters follow) it will push IE into improving its own rendering engine. Although even their unreleased version seems to be a bit behind the times...
From TFA: It is somewhat worrying that IE 6 renders Acid 2 very similarly to Opera 3.6, and the hyped IE 7 renders it very similarly to Opera 4.
'Somewhat worrying' indeed. I know people (of the pretty-damn-computer-literate variety) that won't switch from IE6 because it "works fine for them". I'm sure they know about the vulnerabilities [now that Symantec says so, it must be official!], the rendering issues and speed*, but they are sticking to their guns. So the only way people like this will have their experience enhanced is by teams like Mozilla and Opera pushing the browser envelope and hoping IE take interest. Either that or some X factor that makes the alternative browser a 'killer app', rather than IE, which is an app killer. (I couldn't resist, sorry!)
Well done again to Opera. Webmasters everywhere are silently saying a big 'thank you'.
*Note: I am aware that some will say that IE 6 loads quicker/renders quicker than FF. I have found the two of comparable speed for light pages, and FF slightly faster for 'heavier' pages. Opera is faster than both of them. Draw your own conclusions, and install all three (or two if your run a non-Windows OS). I found an old demo disc with IE 3 recently, and will be trying that out.
I like how... (Score:5, Insightful)
Internet Explorer getting better (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Internet Explorer getting better (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Internet Explorer getting better (Score:4, Funny)
IE 7, the Hannibal of web standards?
who was first after safari? (Score:3, Insightful)
Second browser after Safari? Which was the first after Safari to do it? Oh, you mean the second browser, after Safari...It's amazing what commas can do. Learn to use them.
An ACID test giving a smiley? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:An ACID test giving a smiley? (Score:5, Funny)
See how your browser fares... (Score:5, Informative)
Lynx doesn't pass... (Score:5, Funny)
When Will IE Pass the Test? (Score:1)
Who the hell cares (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
For the curious - (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, It would appear that Opera 9 has just one thing wrong - the nose. It's not supposed to be blue, it's supposed to be black, as per the sample rendering here: http://webstandards.org/act/acid2/reference.html
Re:For the curious - (Score:5, Informative)
More elaborate history (Score:5, Informative)
There's a more useful history about it here [timaltman.com] (in reverse chronological order), describing what exactly the standard compliance problems were, and how they fixed them, starting with Opera 8.00.
And go to the Opera Desktop Team blog [opera.com] to download the actual build that works with this. However, note that this build should be treated like a Firefox nightly, and there may be some pretty serious rendering regressions, doing currently more damage to the layout engine than good from following the Acid2 test.
big deal (Score:3, Funny)