Opera Lays Down Acid2 Challenge

sebFlyte writes "The CTO of Opera has proposed a new version of the acid test for browser compatibility, and has challenged Microsoft to make IE7 a browser worth having that will do the Web good. He's asked to help from Web designers the world over to build a new page for Microsoft to test IE7 with to make sure it does everything Web designers want it to. "

Comments

Why just microsoft?

[MoneyT]

Has anyone (even Opera) managed to create a browser that does what all the web designers want it to do? Does the web designer community have a consensus of what they want the browsers to do?

Re:Why just microsoft?

[Pionar]

Yes, it's called W3C specifications.

Like the one for xHTML 1.0. The one that currently has IE in my doghouse is CSS2 support, especially the Box Model. Firefox gets it right. Opera gets it right. But IE gets it totally wrong, forcing web designers to use unsightly hacks to get CSS to behave the same way in IE.

The web community has always had this consensus, going back to HTML 3.2 and even further back. It's the browser makers that can't seem to come to a consensus, which is ridiculous because the W3C tells you how a user agent should behave.

Standards, schmandards...

[glamslam]

Standards compliance is for companies that don't have 90% or more of a market.

Next!

Great Strategy

[aspx]

This is brilliant!! Appear to be helpful, but really just point out shortcomings and bugs in your competitor's product, all the while gaining visibility and recognition in the community. I really must remember to do this sometime.

Why take up the gauntlet?

[Fjandr]

Microsoft would more than likely simply ignore the challenge completely. What do they have to gain (at this point) from actually producing a standards-compliant browser?

Now, perhaps if FireFox continues to chew up the percentages of web browser usage, they might try it for PR purposes, but that's hardly an issue at the moment. Microsoft is more of an in-the-moment company (unless you're speaking of up-and-coming products, where they announce competing programs years before they actually plan to implement the changes).

Re:Why Bother?

[jbplou]

If you are making a web page and you are not coding so that is renders correctly on IE you are a fool. It has 85% market share.

Re:Opera

[QuietLagoon]

Opera is hardly the bastion of interoperability.

Correct. However, Opera is falling behind in mindshare now that FireFox has all the buzz. So the best thing for Opera to do is to put up a standards challenge to Microsoft.

That accomplishes two things: (1) some free PR for Opera, and (2) if anyone really follows through with it, it is far easier for Opera to adapt to the results than Microsoft. Opera has only a miniscule installed base that it needs to stay compatible with.

Re:Why Bother?

[Low2000]

Because if IE becomes more standards complient, that means that web coders will make their websites standards compliant. Thats good for the alternative browsers out there like Firefox and Opera more then anyone else. MS has enjoyed being in control of the bulk of the web browsing community for so long that if their browser doesn't conform to standards, the web coders have to conform to the browser.

Re:Opera

[bogie]

FWIW last time I checked Opera was pretty much tied with Firefox for being standards complaint. Among browsers that normal human use that's saying a lot.

Based on that I don't see what's laughable.

Re:Sometimes, IE renders bad HTML well

[Anonymous Coward]

Browsers shouldn't render broken HTML.

Compilers shouldn't compile broken code.

If, as a programmer, you think that a compiler is better because it will compile buggy code without errors then god help you.

The same applies to web design. Buggy HTML might render OK as just HTML, but once you start adding CSS into the equation (and IE has its OWN little array of bugs here) then it can start causing severely bizarre behavior.