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Opera 9.0 Fully Passes ACID2 Test
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!"."
Great that they pass the ACID test, but the real-world is just not perfect or by-the-book. They need to be able to handle what really happens, too. Example, my workplace Exchange web interface- Safari misses parts of the page, FireFox renders it fine. ACID test or no, I like the one that works in all situations.
I don't think this should be judged based on how much of an achievement it is. The important part is that the browser passes the ACID2 test. How hard it was for each individual browser to get there is not important.
Who got there first also isn't important, we just need all browsers to get there.
... they show IE screenshots, but don't show how close/far away Netscape and Mozilla and Firefox are from passing.
Firefox is good. The plugins extend the browser hugely.
But I'm happy with Opera, be it for the faster responce I get on the same machine as I have Firefox installed on, the ability not to search for plug ins for whatever feature I need, 'it just works'
I just find Opera is faster at implementing standards, is more reliable with IE geared sites (don't like the fact, but I have to be pragmatic and deal with it as promoting interoperability is not what pays my bills), is more innovative (has important new features first and has them 'out of the box') and makes a good testing ground for my projects, and is all together very nice. And now it's free (as in beer).
Firefox is good. Opera is good too. Different priorities for different users, I don't have access to source code or the ability to contribute in the same way, but for me I'm fine with that. Both are far superior to IE's features, security and map for an interoperable internet in the future. Nuff said.
> I'm all for web standards, but isn't ACID2 a purely academic excercise? It's nice that a browser passes it,
> 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.
So the test is verifying conformance not only with treatment of valid CSS, but also correct treatment of invalid CSS, which is very important given that a significant part of compatibility problems between current web-browsers is caused by different behavior in the face of errors - whether they ignore it, stop parsing, try to render it anyway etc.
Then maybe you should stop making websites, because people like you are the problem.
They're "only a guideline" in that the FBI won't knock on your door if you don't follow the standards. And oh yeah, a lot of browsers will accept your sloppy coding and "render it fine." However, if you want a world where all browsers render all content in the same way, that can't be accomplished by the developing team of any browser. That can only be accomplished by developing and following standards. So, you blame the browser when they don't follow them, and you blame the web developer when he doesn't follow them.
I'm fine with browsers who want to go the extra mile and have non-standard code render correctly, as long as they don't sacrifice proper rendering of the standard code to do it. That doesn't excuse you coding incorrectly, though.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.