IE 5.5 Beats IE6 and IE7 On Acid 3

Steven Noonan sends us to a page where he is collecting and updating results for various browsers on the newly released Acid 3 test. No browser yet scores 100 on this test. (We discussed Acid 3 when it came out.) He writes, "It's not surprising that Internet Explorer is losing to every other modern browser, but how did IE 5.5 beat IE 6.0 and 7.0?" All of the IE versions score below 20 on Acid 3.

Comments

Uhhh

[Hassman]

No one else finds it odd that only a few browsers scored over 60%... What good is a standard that no one adheres to?

Makes it seem more like a suggestion...

Re:Uhhh

[xZgf6xHx2uhoAj9D]

The Acid tests are, to put it kindly, perverse. They basically try to hit every corner case of the standards in the most convoluted way possible. I'm not saying 60% is adequate, but it's understandable for a browser that's under development.

Re:Uhhh

[mike_sucks]

You're right, they aren't standards. Go to any one of the W3's "standards" documents and you'll see they are all called "Recommendations", HTML 4.01, for example. The cool kids call them "RECs".

Now, what good is a recommendation, you ask? Plenty - mostly interoperability. The W3C provides a specification and recommends people implement it. Those that do can interoprate. The consumer wins.

How do you get the vendors to implement the RECs? Make it an important bullet point on their feature lists. The Acid tests are a particularly well done kick in the backside for browser vendors. They have effectively become more important than the bullet point that says "standards compliant" because they are a (limited) test suite. For vendors to be able to say they do well in the tests, certain key parts of the RECs must be implemented and done so correctly, there is no room for buggy or partial implementation.

The result in the end is better interoperability. The RECs provide that common basis that vendors can't quibble over. The Acid tests are both the carrot to get them implementing the RECs and proof that they did so (partially) correctly.

/Mike

Re:Uhhh

[Blakey Rat]

Netscape/Mozilla also "didn't care" for a long period of time... that multiple-year-long slog between Netscape 4 and Mozilla 6 during which they didn't release a browser whatsoever. Of course, Microsoft does that between IE 6 and IE 7 and it's a horrible crime against humanity, but when Netscape/Mozilla did it, it's all OK.

Microsoft stopped development on IE because:
1) They weren't charging any money for it,
2) There was no feasible competition on Windows,
3) It was definitely "good enough" and in some ways superior to competing browsers. (XMLHttpRequest was invented by Microsoft, you might recall.)

Considering that IE and Netscape were both pretty much just pulling "standards" out of their ass in the early days, the only reason Mozilla browser are more standards-compliant now is that they shredded the Netscape 4 code and started from scratch. IE is IE because, at the time this code was being written, the "standard" was "what Netscape did."

All I can say is that I hope HTML5 starts hitting browsers soon... HTML5 is the first Internet standard designed by people who know what people actually use the web for.

(CSS is supposed to be a language to describe page layout. And yet, it has no support for columns until CSS3. It took THREE VERSIONS to come up with a layout idea that's been used in newspapers for books for literally centuries?! This is a language designed by people amazingly removed from reality. And that's just one example of the idiocy of web standards.)

Re:Uhhh

[Bogtha]

Netscape/Mozilla also "didn't care" for a long period of time... that multiple-year-long slog between Netscape 4 and Mozilla 6 during which they didn't release a browser whatsoever. Of course, Microsoft does that between IE 6 and IE 7 and it's a horrible crime against humanity, but when Netscape/Mozilla did it, it's all OK.

They aren't even remotely the same actions. Microsoft disbanded the Internet Explorer development team and assigned the developers to different projects. Netscape/Mozilla.org decided to invest extra time rewriting things to get a better end result. I personally think that was a bad investment, but that doesn't mean they killed the browser market and stopped development.

IE is IE because, at the time this code was being written, the "standard" was "what Netscape did."

Actually, Microsoft had a head-start with CSS because Netscape bet on JSSS. The W3C subsequently chose to reject JSSS in favour of CSS, meaning that while Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3 with preliminary CSS support, Netscape scrambled to transcode CSS to JSSS so that Netscape 4 had some kind of CSS support.

So far from the standard being "what Netscape did", it was actually the other way around. The reason why Microsoft is so far behind is entirely their own doing.

All I can say is that I hope HTML5 starts hitting browsers soon... HTML5 is the first Internet standard designed by people who know what people actually use the web for.

Ahh yes, HTML 5, complete with the <font> element type. Because they know what people actually use the web for.

It took THREE VERSIONS to come up with a layout idea that's been used in newspapers for books for literally centuries?!

Web pages have infinite vertical space. Newspapers and books don't. Horizontal space is at a premium for web pages. It's not as important for newspapers and books. Unsurprisingly, a layout strategy that trades horizontal space for vertical space isn't a high priority for a technology primarily aimed at web pages. I wouldn't say that web standards that actually prioritise the web are nothing but "idiocy", I'd say that's entirely sensible.

Old Web Browser Standards

[EEPROMS]

To put it all into perspective how bad IE 8.0 is when it comes to web standards I tested a two year old install of Konqueror (KDE 3.4) and it gets a score of 51%. The best IE 8.0 can do is 17%.

Re:And older firefox versions do better too

[Samari711]

a beta version having worse performance than a production version isn't exactly the same as an ancient, no longer supported version having better performance than the current production version.

Yes, you don't get it.

[Belial6]

I would have to say that it is that you don't get it. No one is so arrogant as to think that they can sit down and design the perfect web. As with virtually all of human achievement, we expect that there will be continual advancement, and hopefully we will never hit a wall. The Acid tests are road marks on the advancement of web browsers. The Acid tests are for the purpose of seeing just how compatible the browsers are. Scores of 0% and 100% are both useless. So, you make a test that is not so hard that no one can get even 1%, and that are not so easy that everyone gets 100%.

Well, the browsers are getting to that 100% point. Acid2 was not built to check 100% compliance, at that would have been useless. Not that the main browsers are reaching 100%, Acid2 is becoming useless, and Acid3 is necessary to see who has the best compliance. To use your school analogy, consider Acid2 to be the second grade. It is important to achieve that level, but when you do, you can expect the 3rd grade to follow it.

(And if your opinion of public schools is as low as mine, you are welcome to substitute "second grade" with level of knowledge that a 7 year old should have.

Re:Very simple

[Bogtha]

Microsoft doesn't WANT IE to be compatible.

This might fit in well with Slashdot groupthink, but it doesn't fit in well with reality.

Back when Internet Explorer 6 was being developed, they were in direct competition with Netscape. Internet Explorer 6, when it was released was probably the best browser around when it came to supporting CSS. And you want us to believe that the explanation for 6 being worse than 5.5 in this test was deliberate sabotage by Microsoft?

They abandoned Internet Explorer development when they won the browser war. Sure, at that point you can make a case for them not wanting to be compatible. But at that point, they weren't developing Internet Explorer at all, so you can't use it as an explanation for Internet Explorer getting worse. And when Internet Explorer development was restarted, they were responding to a call for improved standards support,which they have delivered on.

I'm sorry, but deliberate sabotage is a ridiculous way of explaining this. Remember, the Acid tests are designed to trigger flaws in popular browsers. Of course it's going to target Internet Explorer 6 and 7 bugs over ancient versions. Internet Explorer 5.5 is no longer popular, so what's the point in ferreting out bugs for the Acid3 test? The real surprise is that people didn't expect this result.

Re:safari

[bunratty]

Safari development builds are doing well on Acid3, and Safari passed Acid2 quickly, because Safari developers fixed the problems that the Acid tests demonstrate. If you look at the stable release builds of Safari, they do far worse than the stable release builds of Opera and Firefox. But if you look at the latest development builds, Safari does far better than Opera and Firefox. Safari is doing well on Acid tests because the developers put a lot of effort into making Safari do well on Acid tests, not because Safari is "ahead of the game" on standards.

There's far too much bickering about which browser is best and which browser is behind the curve. It seems that Safari, Opera, and Firefox are all very good browsers each with their own strengths in standards compliance and user interface, with IE constantly playing catch-up.

Re:Very simple

[Bogtha]

I guess it depends on when you consider the war to have ended, but the important point is that Internet Explorer 6 was indeed a marked improvement in standards support over Internet Explorer 5.5, so it's silly to say that it deliberately does worse in a test written the best part of a decade later. If Microsoft were trying to do worse with Internet Explorer 6, then they failed.

Re:You shouldn't be supporting standards

[LanceUppercut]

Sorry, but this is just plain nonsense. It is like saying that C and C++ standards made programming easy. However, the truth is that even if you teach the whole world all the intricacies of C or C++, it still won't turn everybody into programmers.

Re:safari

[Koiu Lpoi]

Safari is doing well on Acid tests because the developers put a lot of effort into making Safari do well on Acid tests, not because Safari is "ahead of the game" on standards.
 
Are these really different? The Acid Tests test standards compliance, so if you do well on them, even if it is your aim to do so, aren't you embracing standards?

Re:Very simple

[arotenbe]

Hell, call me when they accomplish anything that plays well with others. In case you haven't been paying attention, IE8 already pass Acid2, which is a strict enough test by itself. Don't tell me that isn't trying to be compliant, especially given IE7's miserable performance at that same test. That and the fact that, unlike any previous release of IE, Microsoft's stated goal for IE8 is to improve standards compliance.

Re:And older firefox versions do better too

[edwdig]

Any browsers that came out before the Acid3 test was released are doing absolutely dismally.

That's exactly the point of the Acid tests. They're designed to motivate browser developers by pointing out a lot of flaws in current implementations.

Re:safari

[m50d]

Well yes, but the Acid Tests can't and won't test *all* standards. So it's a question of whether and how much you prioritize those particular standards over other, possibly more important (whatever that means) ones.