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IE 8 Passes Acid2 Test
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Dec 19, 2007 07:01 PM
from the one-small-step-for-ie dept.
from the one-small-step-for-ie dept.
notamicrosoftlover writes to tell us Channel9 is reporting that Internet Explorer 8 has correctly rendered the Acid2 page in "standards mode". "With respect to standards and interoperability, our goal in developing Internet Explorer 8 is to support the right set of standards with excellent implementations and do so without breaking the existing web. This second goal refers to the lessons we learned during IE 7. IE7's CSS improvements made IE more compliant with some standards and less compatible with some sites on the web as they were coded. Many sites and developers have done special work to work well with IE6, mostly as a result of the evolution of the web and standards since 2001 and the level of support in the various versions of IE that pre-date many standards. We have a responsibility to respect the work that sites have already done to work with IE. We must deliver improved standards support and backwards compatibility so that IE8 (1) continues to work with the billions of pages on the web today that already work in IE6 and IE7 and (2) makes the development of the next billion pages, in an interoperable way, much easier. We'll blog more, and learn more, about this during the IE8 beta cycle." There's also a video interview regarding IE8 development on Channel9."
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Firehose:IE 8 Passes Acid2 Test by Anonymous Coward
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Technology: First Look At the ACID3 Browser Test 133 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."
[+]
Technology: Microsoft Confirms IE8 Has 3 Render Modes 525 comments
Dak RIT writes "In a blog post this week, Microsoft's IE Platform Architect, Chris Wilson, confirmed that IE8 will use three distinct modes to render web pages. The first two modes will render pages the same as IE7, depending on whether or not a DOCTYPE is provided ('Quirks Mode' and 'Standards Mode'). However, in order to take advantage of the improved standards compliance in IE8, Web developers will have to opt-in by adding an additional meta tag to their web pages. This improved standards mode is the same that was recently reported to pass the Acid 2 test, as was discussed here."
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So let's geek this out (Score:5, Funny)
then, when Acid 3 comes out, we can expect conformance by IE27?
Re:So let's geek this out (Score:5, Informative)
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Since you had to... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:So let's geek this out (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:So let's geek this out (Score:5, Funny)
if (url == acid2 test page)
display jpg of correct acid2 rendering
else
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Re:So let's geek this out (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't help be slightly suspicious. I'll believe it when I see it.
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Re:So let's geek this out (Score:5, Interesting)
It explains why they've switched [microsoft.com] to the Word rendering engine for Outlook. The fewer places they're standards compliant, the better for their lockin.
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Re:So let's geek this out (Score:5, Funny)
I would have loved to be in the Room when the call came in.
"Please hold for Bill Gates."
--CRAP, what did I do now--
"Hey, Junior, why did you make me look like an ass in front of the whole world?"
"Ummm..."
"SHUT UP AND DON'T TALK. I just got out of an interview, and they asked me why you were are not communicating. Don't answer that. You know how I hate interviews. You also know how I hate looking like an ass. You also know I told the world we would release IE8 in early 2008. So what gives. Do I need to fire you all and rebrand a version of FireFox as IE8? Cause I'm this close to doing it. Its people like you who give this company a bad name. Now stop wasting my time, start communicating, and the next time we talk you had better have numbers on how many people are switching from IE7 to IE8. If not, please be aware that the next group guy you talk to here at Microsoft will be our security guards escorting you off property. Oh, and by the way, Channel 9 will be there in the morning. The marketing department will be there in the afternoon, and you have been registered in the company communication 101 classes that are offered the first week of every month in Redmond. I've already spoken to the trainer and she is looking forward to working with you each month for the next year. I also what you to be aware that all this work will not impact our deliver date of 1st Quarter 2008.
"Why are you still on the phone. I thought you had code to check in."
-click-
Lesson: Never make the richest guy in the world look like a liar. Especially if he is signing your paycheck.
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Appropriate Tag (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Appropriate Tag (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Appropriate Tag (Score:5, Interesting)
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Only with standard DOCTYPE (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody is in a pickle when it comes to rendering broken HTML. The only solutions are to do the best you can, or display an error message rather than a page. Also, to be fair, most of this mess is indeed caused by Microsoft, but even they can't fix it in a day.
I think it would be nice if browsers continued to fix spaghetti, but also showed a message somewhere that indicated that the page was buggy. Not a pop-up or anything, but a small, unobtrusive icon that was green and happy for a good page, or red and frowny for a bad. If IE had this by default, I think there would be a lot less bad pages on the internet.
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Would anyone mind if.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Would anyone mind if they had rewrite their web pages or at the very least, remove the code that checks for the version of IE and if it is IE in the first place? I wouldn't mind.
Cool. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cool. (Score:5, Funny)
I guess I'd better check Google's top execs for goatees again.
Oh crap. [google.com]
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Good News/Bad News (Score:5, Insightful)
Web developers will finally be able to develop a page once, according to standards, and have it work on all major browser
Bad News:
What, No Comments? (Score:5, Funny)
The people behind the Phantom actually releasing a product
A Duke Nukem Forever teaser
Dell promoting Linux
IE8 passing Acid2
What's next?
Dogs living with cats??
So they've realized how untrusted they are... (Score:5, Funny)
It's almost like think we don't trust them or something.
Remember kids... (Score:5, Interesting)
It'll also be nice it it handles transparent PNGs properly with nothing more than an <img> tag--like how IE/5 Mac did almost eight fucking years ago. [wikipedia.org] Here's how much progress they had made as of 6/2006. [slashdot.org] (Yeah, it's been a while, and maybe they've fixed that, but c'mon.... it was 2006!) Too bad they lined up the Mac guys against a wall and shot them, ensuring that it would take almost a decade to get that one feature into IE/Win.
Feel free to correct me if I've made any factual errors in this post.* Flame if you want, but nicely worded, verifiable responses are preferred and worth a lot more to readers in general.
* aside from the part about shooting the Mac team--I'm (pretty) sure that didn't happen.
Re:Remember kids... (Score:5, Informative)
They finally did in IE7, released in November 2006.
That's not the only thing it tests, but proper error handling is critical for forward compatibility. A fully CSS2-compliant browser, when faced with CSS3, will see it as incorrect code. Ditto for an HTML4 browser looking at HTML5 or XHTML1. If there are well-specified ways to handle errors, and the browsers follow them, then you can predict what browsers will do if they don't support a particular feature.
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Re:"standards mode"? (Score:5, Informative)
This IS out of the box support. Let's have less false assumptions and cheap shots at Microsoft, okay?
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Re:any standard will do (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently that's now changed, and that's a very good thing. Personally, I credit the fact that Gates has given up the role of "software architect" in order to spend more time on his philanthropy. When he left, he seemed to take a lot of organizational arrogance with him.
Somebody is going to point out that ACID2 is not that great an example of real world CSS usage. That's perfectly true (how often do you use CSS to make silly pictures?) but the mere fact that MS has made passing the test a priority indicates a shift in attitude that we should all applaud.
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Re:Wonder how long (Score:5, Informative)
The concept of "standards mode" and "quirks mode" has been around for several years, and is implemented in IE6, IE7, Firefox, and Opera, and for all I know in Gecko as well. The user does not have to flip a switch. The developer has to put some code at the beginning to show that he knows what he's doing, usually in the form of an appropriate DOCTYPE.
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Re:Dec 19? (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes, ACID2 is broken - Server error (Score:5, Informative)
Earlier today I tried to pull up the webstandards.org website, and couldn't. This got me thinking it might be a server problem.
I looked at the code for the test, and at one point it has an OBJECT where it tries to load the url, http://www.webstandards.org/404/ [webstandards.org]. That should fail, causing the browser to display the fallback content inside the OBJECT element instead.
Guess what? That URL is returning a 200 OK code instead of 404 Not Found, so the compliant browsers are doing what they're supposed to do and displaying the content of that page in a little rectangle with scroll bars, and hiding the fallback content that we would normally see.
When their webmaster fixes the server config, the various compliant browsers should start displaying it correctly again.
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