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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. "
*cough* Firefox
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
You can usually remove the word "acid" from "acid test" without doing any harm.
Will IE 7 have 'Electric Kool-Aid' tags?
The coolest voice ever.
It'd be nice if there were reference pages made by the standards committees, so a browser could be simply deemed compliant or not.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
MS has never shown the initiative to make things compliant why should any developers waste precious time coding a page for MS to balk at when there are other browsers out there? Firefox is slowly but surely gaining market share. I say Good Riddance to IE and make room for the new guys. Why HELP MS strenthen their hold?
Microsoft's IE7 developers allow themselves a chuckle and think, "Ha! We've been on acid for decades."
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
Standards compliance is for companies that don't have 90% or more of a market.
Next!
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.
Load even more spyware!!!
Err, oh. I guess that that was not a valid choice.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Is anybody actually caring about IE at this point?
Why would anyone care about the experience of 90% (or whatever) of the site's users?
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).
As opposed to a real name like ScentClone! Thank god we can trust you.
I humbly submit my idea for building a new page for Microsoft to test IE7 with to make sure it does everything Web designers want it to.
Get Firefox!
If it can properly render that link, I'll be satisfied.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Aren't there test suites that test the conformance of an implementation to all aspects of CSS2 standard already? And if not, why not?
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.
Open Source geeks challenged M$ to make windows the most secure OS.
US challenged China to be most democratic country
blah blah
Mod me down as troll, but what makes anyone think M$ cares about a challenge from a competitor?!
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
Or the malicious ones who miscode their site to intentionally over-support a browser.
I support Hakon, but I think he's aiming at the wrong spot.
Caveat: I have used (and liked) Opera since version 3 or so. I am have used (and hated) IE since version 2 or so. I am hardly unbiased.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
it's not over till the fat browser sinks, eh?
haha, I kill me... *snicker*
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
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.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Actually they make quite a bit of money selling Opera. It's used a lot as an embedded app in cell phones, PDAs and such. As I understand it, Opera runs on more devices than any other browser. They also are more than willing to make custom versions for just about any platform or purpose.
Any money they make from people sitting in front of desktops is just bonus.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
This is not meant to be an attack on IE. If reasonable assumptions can be made about what the code should do, even when coded incorrectly, then it's great that IE does this. I'm not sure of any specific examples, but when I first started writing web pages (years ago), I remember that Netscape would cough on some pages that IE rendered well. Invariably, the problem was that I had left off some terminating tags, and IE correctly figured out my intentions.
Three caveats:
First, having Netscape scold me allowed me to fix my code. IMHO, a better way to do this, however, would be to have an option called "pedantic" that would insist on matching tags (where appropriate). This might exist now, and if so, that's great.
Second, trying to "guess" what was intended is rife with problems. Anyone who has used MS Word for long enough knows what I mean.
Finally, I currently use FireFox the vast majority of the time. I do not know if any of what I said is still true.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
XMLHTTPRequest is not specified in any standard. It's more Microsoft extension nonsense which Mozilla foolishly embraced. Then again, the Mozilla guys tend to make poor decisions (hello IDN!)