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IE 8 Passes Acid2 Test
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."
If it takes until version 8 to support Acid 2, or 2^3,
then, when Acid 3 comes out, we can expect conformance by IE27?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I think the holyshit tag would be appropriate here.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
"standards mode" IE will only be available for vista.
Would anyone mind if they had rewrite their web pages or at the very least, remove the code that checks for the version of IE and if it is IE in the first place? I wouldn't mind.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Acid test? Ok... but can it withstand a chair?
Why UNIX?
I guess when Bill Gates asks what the hell is going on, he gets results!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
How well is Opera's lawsuit with M$ going to go over with this news?
Good News: ...
... in the year 2012 (give or take a few years), when the percentage of web users using IE 5, 6 or 7 finally dips below 5%.
Web developers will finally be able to develop a page once, according to standards, and have it work on all major browser
Bad News:
After all, how hard is it to build a special case for one specific website?
No rush Microsoft, Firefox and Opera work just fine for me and everyone that I know.
What have we seen recently?
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??
That's not necessarily true. There are graceful ways to deprecate commonly used design elements, even those specific to IE (read: hacks). It's been my experience that once someone says, "ok, this still works but it's going away" developers shun it like the plague for anything in active development, and rightly so.
Wow, talk about moving the goalposts. It's reasonable to expect a Web browser to adhere to standards -- so when IE finally does, the new reason to hate MS is because IE also supports the pages that are on the Web today?
Making IE8 render pages the way IE7 does is the smart way to go for Microsoft. If people woke up one morning and none of their sites looked right, they'd be rightfully pissed off. IE8 will give people the time to make their "crap code" standards-compliant ... though if they haven't done it by IE9, they might be shit out of luck.
Oh, and BTW -- as long as people are coding, there will always be crap code. Standards will not make crap code go away.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
What's really holding the web back is the quirks mode which still exists in IE7, and will exist in IE8. If Microsoft is serious about standards support, they need to stop supporting 'web designers' who right non-compliant code.
So Taco wants me to believe that:
A) duke nukum might actually see the light of day
B) ie 8 passes Acid 2
Its not april fools day, according to the snow outside. Is Taco trying to create another practical joke day: Dec 19?
Thats so awesomely random, but it sort of upstages my plans of trying to make Dec 20 th a joke day. Oh well pretended to be surprised when crazy things happen tomorrow as well.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
IE8's release date has been pushed back 3 months.
Is anyone else having trouble with the acid2 page? Safari and Firefox 3.0 beta 1 are failing to render it in the same way.
Standards mode is invoked when you specify a strict doctype in the page.
This IS out of the box support. Let's have less false assumptions and cheap shots at Microsoft, okay?
Am I the only one who thinks it's hilarious how thorough the author is in proving that this is really true. There's a screenshot of the test, video, and even a screenshot of the checkin.
It's almost like think we don't trust them or something.
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.
Soooo... since you have created a community of non-standard web development practices in an otherwise open and standards-based world-wide community, you still feel like you should defend those who followed you in your path of non-standard lock-inery. No thanks. Suck it up and admit you made a big mistake by painting yourself into a corner.
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.
Actually, that sounds exactly like your first goal. "As they were coded" really means "As they were coded to work with our non-standards-based web browser". Again, suck it up and just promise to follow the rules of the community, and we might actually start to respect you a bit more.
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.
I'd like to hear about the 'pre-dated standards' you speak of. Most likely, You're talking about practices you implemented in IE that wandered from existing standards, which maybe became stabilized post-M$ implementation. You can't defend non-standardization by blaming the standards for being STANDARDS. If you break standards that everyone is supposed to adhere to, its YOUR fault, NOT those who didn't embrace your specific practices as their own, personal standards.
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."
How about just making IE8 as standards-based as the other players in the field instead of feeling like you are required to ween your followers from your own sour milk?
As far as I'm concerned, the underlying goal is (and always has been for M$) in the very $ at the end of M$ that has become so popular for many. You can't mask the underlying motive with excuses like what you have given.
Suck it up and play by the rules, or you'll eventually be kicked out of the game.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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.
asleep? So, I get home really tired and go take a nap... Then, I wake up, log on slashdotm, and that's the headlines I read: - Duke Nukem Forever Teaser Released - IE 8(!) Passes Acid2 Test(!!!!) I'm sure there's an twilight zone episode just like that!
Now that we broke the web with our own version of standards, we're going to break it again with the real standards.
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. Here's how much progress they had made as of 6/2006. (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.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The point? The point is I can write proper CSS now, without having to worry about how IE will fuck it up. I can use alpha channels in png's and all sorts of things without writing it two different ways, so it will render across all browsers. I don't care about how crappily written the rest of the web is, I can write my little bits of it properly. Standards compliance isn't about punishing content authors that don't adhere to the standard. It perfectly alright to be lenient about non-validating code. But validating code needs to be rendered properly, and Microsoft seems to be getting that point at last.
...google for how to take a screenshot on linux... I do not think I trust your findings... Ad hominem FTW!!!.. ;P ... j/k
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.
Why fix bugs when the bugs worked better than the fixes? With the standard breaking IE6, random "updates" that makes IE7 css hacks useless, and now a new "standard compliant" IE8 that may or may not contain other bugs The task of writing pages to support IE6, IE7, IE8 will become equivalent to travelling on a mine field, a melting glacier and an active volcano in 3 parallel universes in the same car at the same time
Comment removed based on user account deletion
IE7 is demonstrably more secure -- at least on Vista and IE8 can pass Acid. What will /.ers complain about next? The UI?
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Sorry if that's not inflammatory enough. I could try harder. I must say, though, this is good news and I'm glad the IE 8 team is working on this. Better late than never. Oh, and I can't get Firefox 2 or the beta of 3 to pass Acid2 either.
While we're on the subject of Firefox, whose bright idea was it to solve the memory leaks in 2.0.0.8 or so by making 2.0.0.11 use more and more processor time instead of more memory? Seriously, it's easy enough to kill a 200 MB Firefox instance and reopen the browser, but this 97% processor usage is just a pain in the ass. Infinite loops are not progress. I don't have to worry about that particular problem in any version of IE I've ever seen from 3.0 to 7.0 inclusive.
Hrrrmm... I always thought Microsoft's philosophy was "Embrace, Extend, Destroy".
But now they're adopting standards?
Either:
1) Someone spiked my coffee.
2) I'm dreaming.
or
3) Steve Ballmer hasn't heard about this yet.
"Standards mode" is a browser rendering mode which first appeared in Internet Explorer 6, as a way for Microsoft to get around the Catch-22 of fixing their browser to be more standards compliant, and not breaking so many websites at the same time.
"Standards mode" is triggered by the presence of a proper DOCTYPE, like one of the ones here.
"Quirks mode" is a rendering mode triggered by the lack of the DOCTYPE, which causes the browser to emulate many of the bugs that, if fixed, would break lots of sites.
All the major browsers implement standards/quirks mode these days. Internet Explorer 7/8's quirks mode rendering has not changed since IE6, which means, if your non-standards-compliant site worked in IE6, and doesn't use a DOCTYPE, it's not going to further break in IE7/8.
I meant "for all I know in WebKit as well." Gecko, of course, is the engine used by Firefox.
You can't determine a pattern w/ two points. That only makes a line!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
That depends on when IE8 is released. It took them 1.75 years to get from announcing IE7 (Feb 2005) to releasing it (Nov 2006). Presumably they've been working on IE8 for a while, but if it takes them another 21 months, we're looking at fall 2009. Who knows what the Windows install base will look like then?
Personally, I'm hoping it'll be out by the end of 2008, though my current goal is to get people the hell off of IE6. Upgrade to IE7, switch to Firefox, Opera, Safari, whatever, just ditch that aging monstrosity of a browser if you possibly can (and aren't barred by your IT department, or a need to access some critical site that only works in IE6).
But I have hacked the IE8 code base. Here is the code they have added to pass ACID2: if (url.equals("http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html#top")) { draw("smileyFace"); }
the acid test is not a standards compliance test... it's a test of how well browsers break on sites that DONT support standards. It's not a measure of standards support for the browser, but it is nice to have.
"The need to build the internet comes from something inside us, something programmed... something we can't resist."
So you would be the grammer-nazi in this situation, I guess?
Extra, extra, Microsoft Corporation is an MS-hater! News at 11!
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Or should that be IE7 = Vista of browsers? Prettier interface, annoying changes to the menus/toolbars, took years to be released and offers minor improvements over the previous version.
To be fair, any page without a DOCTYPE is not compliant, and can't be rendered in a compliant way. Any page without a DOCTYPE is probably buggy in other ways too. Firefox has a quirks mode too, and tries to fix buggy pages. It identifies a buggy page the same way, by looking at the DOCTYPE.
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.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
I think this is important news even for the typical slashdot reader (doesn't use IE, isn't a web developer) because it means that webpages are going to look better now. Web developers who only target IE will no longer build pages that look funny in Firefox, because IE8 will finally render things correctly. Great stuff!
I'm on Safari (Mac) right now... here's hoping they add a download manager too, and maybe support for the XML/HTML mime type (proper XHTML support).
Jeremy
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.
I used to have a script that would download an unofficial nightly build of Firefox every morning when I logged in. A lot of the "unofficial" nightly builds will use up and coming features like newer Gecko engines, and have some non-standard optimizations turned on.
Look around here, and you should be able to find a frequently updated nightly build that uses Gecko 1.9. If you update frequently you'll definitely want to keep a backup of the last "good" install.
That being said: Konqueror! FTW!
Maybe not
It looks like a server error, since all Acid2-compliant browsers seem to be rendering it with the same exact error. More in this comment.
But it makes a _perfectly_ straight line, and that can't be an accident.
Firefox has Standards Mode, too (right-click anywhere on a page->View Page Info). It differentiates between "Quirks" mode and Standards-compliance mode. "Quirks" mode is used when invalid markup is detected, or if there's no DOM declared; Standards-compliance mode simply means that the site is being displayed to spec, instead of being cleaned up by the browser's interpretation as to what way it should look. Standards-compliance mode, in theory, should always look the same on every browser (it's why standards *exist*), but as everyone who's done web design knows, that's not the case. That's not to say I support Microsoft, but as a web developer, I have to look forward to the day when most of the audience on the web can view my pages properly, without the need for time-consuming workarounds. In actuality, IE7 really has impacted me to an extent, since none of the old workarounds for IE6 work for it any more, and it still doesn't get things right. So I have to work around IE6, IE7, and any differences that those workarounds cause in browsers like Opera and Firefox who display it right the first time, which is a major headache and waste of time considering there's standards for these browsers to follow.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
Netscape started it!
In short, it's more efficient for what I do. For those that only open 1 or 2 pages at a time and leave one page when they visit a new page, maybe it's not worth their while. I have 8 sessions of firefox open right now with an average 5-6 tabs open in each. One's got 10 tabs open to comic strips I like to read in the morning. Another has 5 slashdot tabs open. Another has e-bay and a college text book selection open with multiple shopping sites in tabs, etc. My task bar couldn't hold 40 or so firefox windows on it along with all of the other programs I have running and be as efficient at finding what I want when I wanted to switch tasks.
As another user stated, it saves on memory resources to use tabs as well. You don't have to use them -- you can even turn tabs off completely in many browsers. I think they're the best invention for the web since the search engine, but maybe they're not for you. Tabs are just a tool. I find them incredibly useful for what I do, but maybe some people like yourself don't have a use for them.
I agree that tabs suck, but unfortunately, they are the best we have right now
If an easy shortcut to open in a new window existed, and window organization (easily!) into hierarchies was allowed in the general case, such that switching inside any level of the hierarchy was possible, and was convenient (the Window scale effect comes to mind), then tabs would become an unnecessary ad-hoc kludge.
If something is implemented by only one application, it is not a standard.
And MS is a member of the W3C, if I'm not severely mistaken.
There is no such thing as "IE standard". If there were, then different versions of IE wouldn't render pages completely differently.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Think about it why should we use tabs, really?
Easy. The vast majority of window managers on any OS, when a new window is opened, will give it focus. Most of the time that's probably the wrong thing to do (in my opinion) but that is the default behaviour. I like to browse through pages on Ebay, Wikipedia, Slashdot etc., and when I see a link I like I middle-click on it. In Firefox and IE7 this opens a new tab without switching focus and loads the page in the background. On IE6 it opens a new window (in fact you have to right-click then select open in new window), I then have to ALT-TAB or click back to my original window to carry on browsing. Most people that I've pointed this out to have then tried browsing with tabs for a few days and never gone back. On IE6 if you're browsing with the window maximised then open a link in a new window, the new window will not be maximised, so again I have to mess around to carry on browsing the way I want.
I'm usually totally against MDI type arrangements, of which tabs I guess are really a derivative. However, I have to say that I find tabbed browsing extremely efficient and intuitive.
Agreed, I sometimes have more tabs open than the amount of icons I could manage on the task bar.
I'm often switching between tabs with CTRL+Tab or CTRL+Shit+Tab (with Firefox) improving my navigation between web pages.