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does anyone with firefox 3 beta 2 notice that it doesnt pass the acid2 test???

if you have firefox 3 beta 2 please go to:

http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html#top

and let me know

It does pass. The original Acid 2 test page http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html accidentally got changed a bit (so that a missing link returns error code 200 instead of 404 not found). That's why FF (and other browsers like Safari and Opera) "fail" on that page. But see the mirrored page here http://www.hixie.ch/tests/evil/acid/002/ to verify that FF 3b2 (and Safari and Opera and IE 8... OOoops! can't test that one!) do pass...

I noticed the same error on Konqueror 3.5.8, Opera 9.5a, & Firefox 3 on Linux, and on Opera 9.24 and Safari 3.04 on Windows -- all of which are supposed to pass the test.

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/. 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.

it's a test of how well browsers break on sites that DONT support standards.

No, actually. That's part of it, yes, but nowehere near the whole thing.

You're right about it not being a compliance test, in the sense that passing Acid2 doesn't indicate full compliance with any specific standard. It does, however, indicate that the browser handles a number of features from the specs that were poorly, rarely or not implemented when it was announced in 2005.

Is anyone else having problems with the ACID2 page? It's not rendering correctly for me in either Opera 9.24 or Safari 3.0.4 Beta for Windows on my PC.

I'm fairly sure that they were both rendering correctly a few weeks ago.

And to follow up, here's a page that goes into much more detail on just what Acid2 tests, including:

• Data URLs
• Transparent PNGs
• The object element
• Absolute, relative and fixed positioning
• Box model
• CSS tables
• Margins
• Generated content
• CSS parsing (this would be the part about handling incorrect code)
• Paint order
• Line heights
• Hovering effects

Everything that Acid2 tests is specified in a Web standard, but not all Web standards are tested. Acid2 does not guarantee conformance with any specification.

Everything that Acid2 tests is specified in a Web standard, but not all Web standards are tested. Acid2 does not guarantee conformance with any specification.

Correct code works as specified on less that 1% of the browser base, and therefore is a topic that is only meaningfully discussed by academics, utopians, and others who don't live in the real world.

Broken code works on 99% of the browser base, and therefore is what the rest of us actually use. The fact that there is no specification for what particular witches' brew of broken code will get the job done is a point of annoyance for web developers, but it does not change the fact that following the specifications will break your web site.

What makes you claim that?

This story on the site.

I can't see that said anywhere on the site
You apparently didn't look hard enough.

Maybe that information's accurate and maybe it's not.
So, you're admitting that you don't know, didn't see the story on the site, and yet still feel qualified to fame me.

Way to set the bar high, doofus.

Are you running a Mac? This story it seems to work fine on a Mac but fails on Windows.

Another catch is that the evolving of HTML into XHTML may be with good intentions but the end result is that it's no longer an easy world to work in. That means that HTML still should evolve in it's own right. However there are a few features that I really would like to see in future HTML versions:

• Consistent tag handling where all tags shall have start and stop tagging as XHTML has. It will make things more consistent.
• HTML may keep it's case insensitive tags - that's no big issue.
• Look into a few new input tag types, the ones that exists aren't bad but sometimes there would be benefit from a <select> tag that also allows the user to manually input a value, which is impossible today unless you insert a special component to handle that feature.
• A certification test program for web browsers wouldn't really hurt. There is the Acid2 test and a few others, but a more comprehensive test wouldn't hurt.

Another web feature that needs an overhaul is the scripting. JavaScript is in some ways good, but it's also very bad since it isn't type-safe. It is however a lot better than VBscript which is something that we got for our sins and binds the functionality to the Microsoft world only. So what we have are two solutions; One half-baked, namely JavaScript and one completely sticky and messy, VBScript.

So much for rants and flames...

It passes it BUT it does not pass it anymore if you change the Default font to Cambria. I have the Vista fonts because I have Office 2007 on my Windows XP Pro SP2. I like the Cambria font better than Times New Roman, so I change the Default font under "Tools ==> Options ==> Content" tab. Then, try refreshing the page for the ACID2 test (http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html/) and the smiley looks weird and it fails the ACID2 test.

It does appear to do MUCH better on the Acid2 test than FF2 (guess the new rendering engine could be all that it was hyped up to be), but it doesn't quite pass - if you compare to the reference rendering, you'll notice that there is a little too much space between the mouth and bottom edge of the space (I opened the reference and the live test is two different tabs and switched back and forth).

Hrm.. I did the same here and noticed that the nose is slightly smaller (by like one pixel on each side) than the reference rendering.. But damn close!

It seems Firefox 3 also passes the Acid2 test.

A few other minor observations - it won't install any add-ons unless they update securely. So far the only add-ons I've been able to install successfully are GMail Notifier and Adblock Plus. I'm not complaining (since it is a beta release specifically for developers and testers). I just can't wait for development and support of my favorite add-ons to take place!

One nice thing I noticed is that if you are installing add-ons from a site that is not in the exceptions list you can just accept it via the title bar now instead of having to open the settings, add the site, reload it, and wait again.

So far I'm impressed! It's fast and smart.

Firstly, ars technica had a look at Linux Firefox 3 visuals a few days ago. This should hopefully be more soothing to your eyes than the Vista screenshots.

Secondly, the Vista screenshots from the ZDNet article can be summarized as follows:
- If you're using Linux you can skip the first 12 screenshots and replace it with a single apt-get/emerge/etc command.
- Screenshots 13 and 15 are the same as what you'd see in Firefox 2 (and this applies to other screenshots in the series as well).
- Screenshot 20 will completely annoy all system administrators and hobbyists who are constantly reinstalling systems and losing desktop/application configuration settings in the process. It is yet another windows-esque "how do you want to do this?" popup on the first usage of the application.
- Screenshot 23 is another annoyance (an extra useless dialog between clicking on a link and saving the file to disk).
- Screenshots 27-29 can also be ignored by Linux users and replaced with a simple uninstall command to your package manager application.

In summary, I was struggling to see any useful changes shown in the ZDNet screenshot gallery. There were a few minor GUI tweaks shown but even these changes weren't entirely useful. What would have been better is to of shown Firefox 3 passing the Acid2 test or receiving higher benchmark scores for page load speeds. In other words: testing the Gecko layout engine rather than getting excited about trivial GUI tweaks. GUI tweaks and fixes are most welcome but it isn't worth all the hype that Firefox 3 is receiving.

I would switch Firefox almost instantly for Epiphany if the later had an inbuilt and dumbed down adblocker similar to easylist/adblockplus, a dumbed down version of noscript and a few other odd features. A lot of people still don't know the differences between the Firefox and Gecko projects. The *MOST* important thing a browser can do is render websites correctly to the relevant HTML/CSS/etc standards (which is the job of the Gecko layout engine). Switching to Ephiphany would also boost performance of the GUI thanks to Ephiphany using native GTK. Firefox is a heavyweight and that is something I'd much rather replace with a lightweight browser.

"KDE's KHMTL passed the ACID 2 test, but not WebKit. ... They are finally merging back together, and future versions of WebKit should pass ACID 2 the way that KHTML does, but not currently."

That is not true actually. Safari was the first browser to pass the Acid2 test (in April 2005). I believe this was rolled out in regular consumer version of Safari in Autumn '05.

This timeline on Wikipedia matched up with my vague recollection - with Safari being the first browser to pass the test both with development code and with an official release (with Konqueror/KHTML following very shortly after).

Works For Me (tm).

The reason it "mangles" webpages is because, unlike many browsers, it's actually standards-compliant. It passes ACID2 completely. Ergo, the problem is that the webpages suck, not that Konqueror is broken.

There are some known issues with Javascript, of course. *rolls eyes* But Slashdot works almost perfectly in Konqueror on my system (KDE 3.5.7).

Of course, once Webkit is fully merged back into KHTML, Konqueror will be using the same HTML rendering engine as every OS X box out there, which will considerably increase the extent of website support!

Well I'm glad it passes a test that claims "Acid2 does not guarantee conformance with any specification." and not some of the published tests - example

Maybe we just have a different definition of 'perfect'.

And 'fanboi'

If Safari is so standards compliant, why does would developers need Safari on Windows to develop for iPhone? Couldn't they just use another standards based browser like FireFox and Opera?

Well, Safari on my Mac renders the Acid 2 test correctly, whereas Firefox 2 does not. So, Firefox might support a lot of standards, but apparently it has some CSS issues. So, to answer your question. No, Firefox is not compatible enough to use instead of Firefox. I can't speak to Opera, however.

> I don't know what safri does the FF can't.

Pass the Acid2 test?

Both the Windows and Mac versions of Safari 3 pass the Acid2 Test for me.

How about Mac? Or anything other than just bloody Vista? The worst problem for anyone publishing on the Web (which is everyone) is having to own all the new OSs for testing our standards-deficient browsers.

On the plus side, I'm shocked to hear Molly Holzschlag is working with MS on the new release.
http://www.webstandards.org/2007/04/02/bringing-st andards-to-microsoft/

Year after year MS has made promises about standards for the next browser and then never delivered. It's been pure Charlie Brown + Lucy + football every time. I'd expect no different for this IE8 hype, except for the mention of Molly.

I've worked with Molly and hold her in the greatest respect. I'm also thoroughly jaded about MS browser announcements and never believe a word anymore. One of these positions will have to shift with the release of IE8, and I'm very curious which it will be.

I've never seen a page that wouldn't render with Firefox but would with Safari or Konqueror. Can you post an example? I assume there are a few sites that would render slightly better, since Firefox doesn't yet pass the acid2 test. I'm just surprised anyone would design a site specifically for Safari, even if the site is Mac-oriented.

Acid2 has my vote for favorite bug-as-a-feature.
For those who don't know, Acid2 is a browser-testing CSS page with many intentional bugs in the code. The result of a fully-compliant browser rendering is a smiley face. Wiki entry with examples.

Yes, it does completely pass the Acid 2 CSS compliance test.

Oh, and what about MSIE 7.0? Where are the improvements? It does not pass the acid test

From: http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/guide/

Acid2 does not guarantee conformance with any specification.

The Acid test is rather, uhm, contrived. Don't get me wrong; I'd like to see IE7 properly implement standards. It's rather irresponsible to use the Acid test as a judgement of standards complience because a browser could pass the Acid test, yet botch every other page.

[ACID2] is not valid CSS, so it does not accurately measure how well the site adheres to CSS.

You need to read the Guided Tour closely, in particular the 'CSS Parsing' bullet within the 'What we are testing?' section.

Is there any site out there that we can direct companies like Walmart or Air Canada to to explain why they should make a standards compliant web site?

Webstandards perhaps?

Maybe Microsoft should focus less on "Vista Integration" and more on CSS support for their browser. Among the 3 Big Browsers (IE, Firefox, and Opera) Opera is the only one that actually passes the Acid2 Browser test. Check it out for yourself.
http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/

Firefox does a decent job, but not one I would expect from a browser such as Firefox. However, IE's support for it is terrible. I'm redesigning my website and the CSS works in every browser I've tried except IE, what is up with that?

Come On MS, I know it's tough, but can you make a browser that at least attempts to comply with web standards? Your browser has been around way longer than Firefox and Opera, but your support is the worst of the three.

After all the promises of better CSS support in IE7, the Acid Test still looks downright embarrassing.

Sorry, but that site looks awful in firefox and konquerer (meaning that it probably doesn't
look right in other khtml based browsers either). I really can't imagine that you meant it to look like this.

A good idea to make site work well everywhere is to run them through html validator at http://validator.w3.org./ When it passes the test, test it in whatever browsers you plan to support, if something doesn't work, remove or change the feature in a way that the page validates correctly.

This gives you the best chances that your site will work even in browsers that you haven't tested.

Currently your site generates 1024 errors when validated.

W3c have also similar test for validating CSS. Use it and then remove or make adjustments so that it works in the browsers you officially intend to support but still passes w3c tests.

BTW, IE regardless of version is a disaster, when it comes to supporting CSS.
Just try http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html.
Firefox will not work properly either, but it is far better than IE. Konquerer passes acid2
and probably others based on KHTML such as Safari, Opera is supposed to work as well.

I really wish browser manufacturers would start to support CSS properly, it would make it so much easier to build and maintain good web sites.

Which one of those doesn't pass the Acid2? Only IE.

I don't get what all this hype about the Acid2 test is about - its not even a standards test! By their own admission it's a "means of exposing the ability of user agents to handle invalid CSS properly" (source).

I'd rather browser makers worked on fixing bugs (may take a while to load) and more rich features.

While you are correct in that FF is leaps and bounds ahead of IE in terms of standards compliance, it's worth noting that FF still doesn't pass the ACID2 test like Opera and some others do.

Passing the acid2 test would ensure that Firefox is compliant with all of today's meaningful web standards. Why doesn't the development team buckle down and say this is priority for future versions of Firefox?

As for usability or personal preference, I have no argument with you. My biggest frustration comes from more of a development slant. There still will be a people using IE and now IE 7 and pages that rely heavily on CSS will have to have a different stylesheet because of the horrible implementation of CSS. Load this page using IE, http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html# top, and see what happens. Load the same page in Firefox, close but no cigar, I have to go to Safari to actually see the page rendered as designed. The point is Firefox is much closer to passing the Acid2 test making web developers lives much easier than the mish mosh of support in IE.

Why doesn't IE (pick any version including 7) come close to passing the acid2 test? Is it concentration on other areas? Disregard for W3C standards?

As a developer these are the most important updates that could have been included in IE 7. But from the standards point of view, not much has changed from IE 6 to IE 7. Sure, there have been many bug fixes, but the acid2 test says everything for standards compliance. Please, please please please, make IE 7.x or IE 8 completely standards compliant. It would make many people happy and give IE some validity as a browser again. Right now, it's seen as a necessary evil.

Have you seen the new IE 7 acid 2 test results? http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html# top They made it even better than the old IE. Now there is stuff that moves when you mouse over it and some random scrollbars too! Kudos to microsoft for creativity!

2. FF fails CSS rendering because it uses an antique CSS engine. http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/

Um, acid2 represents one faction's idea on what an ideal, future-proof CSS implementation should do. It's not be-all end-all test of absolute must-have features of CSS. Gecko doesn't fall too far from the goal, and rest assured they're working on the issues.

Those are my FF issues. What are yours?

I'm not using the beta yet. Um... I would terribly appreciate it if middle-click would do nothing. Currently, on Linux, middle-clicking goes into the URL that I have on selection buffer. Middle click gets clicked by accident awfully often when scrolling and I end up staring at http://www.whateverthecrapihadonclipboardwhenmymou seslipped.com/ (see below).

Um... seems like this can be fixed in about:config. middlemouse.contentLoadURL = false. I think. Didn't know this. Very cool.

Another beef is the automatic expansion of example => http://www.example.com/ which just gives me bunch of false alarms. If I find myself looking at http://www.whateverthecrapihadonclipboardwhenmymou seslipped.com/, I'm going to scream. While I'm at it, it shouldn't even assume I want http:/// there; it should demand full URLs. And above the heck all, if I want to use this as a search engine, I type "g (keywords)", not the plain address - I don't want a search bar, I don't want an intelligent search bar;I just want an ordinary address bar that also has this keyword support thing. Is it too much to ask?

I think this is at least the latter is somehow fixable through about:config, but I forgot the instructions (didn't try it at first because it appeared to have side effects). Setting keyword.url = about:blank, keyword.enabled = false has little effect...

Its Sunday after all right now, so why not pray for FireFox? This is FireFox 2.0 Beta running on my Windows XP PC.

1. Starts without maximizing itself to the full PC screen area. Always leaves space available. In contrast SeaMonkey correctly occupies the full PC screen area when starting (but SeaMonkey makes me create a new profile except for once.). FF thinks its full screen according to its maximize/window button but is mistaken.

2. FF fails CSS rendering because it uses an antique CSS engine.
http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/

Those are my FF issues. What are yours?

Thanks,
Jim Burke

No it's not the "fucking HTML Standard"; it's a test to ensure that browsers implement it correctly, and implement proper error handling while they're at it.

  http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/guide/

It's funny how MSIE fanatics love to point out that Acid2 contains broken code; that is part of the test. If your browser is fairly compliant, it will render the face. Opera, Safari, and Konqueror all successfully pass the test. Firefox and MSIE both fail; in MSIE's case, the failure is catastrophic in that is displays a jumbled mess, but Firefox's rendering of it is not far off from passing.

Why any mention of using Acid2 as a quick acid test draws out the MSIE fanatics and trolls is quite beyond me. The fact of the matter is that MSIE is extremely broken, Firefox is somewhat broken, and coding complex standards-compliant layouts that work seamlessly in all browsers without resorting to hacks is near impossible, and implementing browser-specific hacks to make MSIE behave while achieving the look one wants is often very time consuming.

"It's not "hypocritical" to shoot for standards-compliant markup, "

Exactly true. The first priority should be to get code written that should work. Only after that should you try to write code that actually works.

"and neglect quirky pieces of software that ignore the standards."

You do realise that Firefox is not completely , right?

Previous posts have mentioned Perl and PHP; seconding those for high-intensity search-and-destroy missions. As for software, you can't go wrong with TextPad, WinSCP, and PuTTY.

For best practices (separation of content from structure from behavior, mostly) keep an eye on are listed in and around A List Apart and the Web Standards Project. And if you're looking for several sets of outstanding presentation and behavior tools, check out the YUIBlog and the Yahoo! Developer Network. (Hint: their page grid layout, font normalization, and CSS reset libraries are an excellent place to start.)

The reason the code is invalid is because Acid2 tests correct error handling. If you read the CSS specs you'll see that browsers are supposed to handle errors in specific ways. If they handle the errors to spec, more of Acid2 will render properly. If not? You get something like this. Read the Acid2 guide to get an idea of what exactly they're testing.

Yes, try the acid test here. Indeed my Firefox won't pass. I think it's not fair to hold Microsoft to the ACID test when most of our other browsers won't render it. It doesn't represent a disadvantage of IE over other browsers (except the small group that can support it)

Given that the acid2 standards compliance test http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/ produces identical results in Browzar and IE (well, the version 6 I have installed anyway) I'd say it's a pretty good bet. It will be interesting to see how they go about producing a Mac or Linux version if they're just wrapping the IE renderer in some way.

#1: CSS, XML, (X)/HTML, ECMAscript (JavaScript), DOM. A good start.
#2: Um... write better code. Code reviews. Smoketests. Purify. Seriously, that's what Computer Engineering's all about - writing robust and scalable code.
#3: Native look-and-feel. Support for the drag-and-drop methods of their respective OS'. Support for their native text rendering and printing facilities. Adoption of that OS' accessibility functionality.
#4: don't understand that question.

sloth jr

You on the other hand fail the facts test. Acid2 is not a W3C test:

Acid2 is a test page for web browsers published by The Web Standards Project (WaSP).

Everything that Acid2 tests is specified in a Web standard, but not all Web standards are tested. Acid2 does not guarantee conformance with any specification.

• it has really great standards support
• it has the bits tested by Acid2, but everything else could be broken
• it has been optimized for the test and does not actually conform to the standard even in the tested bits