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Acid3 Race In Full Swing, Opera Overtakes Safari
enemi writes "Just a few days after Safari released version 3.1, Opera employee David Storey writes on his blog that they've overtaken Apple's browser in the Acid3 test. In the race to be the first to reach the reference rendering, Opera's software leads now with 98%, closely following by Safari with 96% and Firefox 3 beta 4 with 71%. He also noted the implemented features will not make a public appearance in the following weeks, because they are getting close to releasing Opera 9.5. That version has been under public testing since September and the new CSS3 color modes and font rendering features might further delay this. They will probably show the score in a preview build soon and wait for a post 9.5 stable build to release the new features to the public." Update: 03/26 21:21 GMT by Z : Opera is now at 100%, apparently, with Safari close behind at 98%.
Update: 03/27 by J : Public build r31356 of WebKit (Safari's rendering engine) is at 100%.
'nuff said.
http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2008/03/26/opera-and-the-acid3-test opera wins
My just-updated Safari (3.1) keels over at 77%.
What version is getting 96%?
Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
Newer builds pass with 100% http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/2008/03/26/opera-and-the-acid3-test
Chances are any disscution on Slashdot will degrade into a flamewar about ID/Christianity within 14 posts.
Actually, as of today, Safari is also at 98/100. See today's entry in the WebKit blog for more.
R.Mo
Either way, it's us punters who are enjoying the fruits of this competition :-)
The Mothership
With Firefox 2.0.0.13 I've been doing just find rendering the render image properly!
http://acid3.acidtests.org/reference.html
Which is a better title: "First browser to reach 100/100" or "First publicly-released browser to reach 100/100"? I might argue for the latter. If anything, I think this gives the WebKit team more of a spark to reach the end.
The whole competition is pointless - we all know IE8 will be the clear winner. Its ok, I couldn't read that with a straight face either.
Okay, So Opera Firefox and Safari all are shooting for compliance with Acid3.
The next major milestone though, right after "X Achieves 100% compatibility in nightly builds" is "X releases version X of browser to the masses/into the wild, capable of passing Acid3 test".
Passing it "in the lab" is one thing, declaring it in a build "ready for release" is another.
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I love to see this competition to meet standards. We all win when this happens.
Although one could argue that any time a product deviates from the standard it should be logged as a bug.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
... and get Acid 4 ready.
This isn't a race, it's a competition.
What do I care who's first? What I care about is who has the best browser that complies with standards. That may also include render speed, stability, javascript compatibility, security, or whatever. "Who's first" is about the thing I care about the least.
AccountKiller
It is awesome that web standards are being fully embraced by important browser vendors.
Although this "competition for standards compliance" is a huge leap forward for the industry, we should give accolades only to those who have delivered production software products, versus those who say they will based on numbers that they see within their non-production builds.
Because in the end, the services that my organization delivers like quality browsers in the hands of real users.
This is getting like the old 3D Mark pissing competition that was around a few years ago. I just hope it's being implemented properly, and not using some "optimisations" just for that page.
Not to be a nitpick, but saying "Opera's software leads now with 98%, closely following by Safari with 96% and Firefox 3 beta 4 with 71%" is like saying "Car A reaches 274 km/h, closely followed by car B with 268 km/h and car C with 198 km/h".
I like Firefox more than Opera or Safari, but saying that 98% is "closely followed" by 96 AND 71% is just stupid. The fact that IE is worse is not a justification.
Update: 03/26 21:21 GMT by Z : Safari is now at 100%, apparently, with Safari close behind at 98%.
Looks like someone wasn't reading what they were writing. The links are right though.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
So there.
The articles update says that Safari has 100% and Safari has 98%.
Can you spot the problem?
God, I hope not. The number of pages that pop up an annoying "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO LEAVE THIS PAGE" alert is getting huge.
I NAVIGATED AWAY FROM THE PAGE, YES, I'M SURE. NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP.
Web pages are not applications, no matter how much the stupidass Web2.0 garbage wants them to be. You don't need to know when I leave your page.
Yes to all. Gecko is huge, old and hard to fix. Can't wait for my Mac to explode from Firefox 3's scroll bar redraw cpu suck. Scroll will crank cpu's to 70% on a 2.3GHz Core2! JUST SCROLLING!
Makes you wonder how Safari is doing using the HEAD code.
We already know why IE7 is behind but what makes Firefox lag behind Safari and Opera with this? Does it all come down to browser share = slow progress? Or could it be that Opera and Safari are putting other projects behind to pass the Acid3 test?
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
Thats kind of like comparing your marathon progress to someone using a walker.
Yeah, sure, they can make it as far as someone else, but it'll take them a lot longer and they will expend a lot more effort.
Compared to a marathoner, or your average High School student and suddenly your progress might not look so hot.
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Yeah, I said it. I'm actually praying for IE8 to be standards compliant as much as possible, and this is coming from a Linux junkie.
Why? Simple; we still can't deny the fact that better than 9/10 of the unwashed masses out there are still paying homage to the Microsoft/Internet Explorer gods. They always have and this, in turn, has always meant that 98% of the browsers visiting a website are going to be IE; this also means that all the authors of these sites are always going to code to specifications that work with IE. If IE is broken in how it renders websites and requires a bunch of HTML and CSS hacks to get things looking right then that same 98% of websites won't render properly in other, more standards-compliant browsers (Opera, Firefox, anything using WebKit, et al).
But, if IE8 defaults to a standards-compliant mode then those same 98% of IE users will eventually force the devs to start coding their sites to standards. This is a case where everybody wins; just like IE's massive user base helped "break" the web, this is a case where that same massive user base can actually force authors to fix their crap (just like we alternative browser users wanted them to do all along).This space for rent!
The problem with races is that the teams do almost anything just to cross the finish line faster. The speed at which the browsers seem to be gaining acid3 compatibility is frankly worrying me. Any developer worth his salt knows that browsers are huge and complex applications and every change must be discussed, designed and implemented properly as to not impact something else and be modular, be properly commented and be clean and well written code.
Also, Acid3 is just about the corner cases, and might not reflect the full standard completely. So a browser can pass the test and still suck at implementing standards, though passing the test is good step. It's just that the high speed of the compatibility improvements for ACID3 in almost all the mainstream browsers screams of hackathon coding sessions to get those few points a day till 100 so that there can be a marketing and PR blitz rather than properly planned programming. I think there is a very good chance of the code containing hacks and workarounds and also tons of security loopholes because of the insane speed at which features are being thrown into the code.
I think there is a very good chance of the new code containing hacks and workarounds and also tons of security loopholes because of the insane speed at which 'features' are being thrown into the code just to make headlines. Being a programmer, I am sure that non-trivial portions of the code will have to be rewritten later. Haste makes waste.
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However, this falls into the "Firefox does Acid 2" category. Until this is done with the release version of the browser, it's a nice thing, but not really available to the average web user. (Cue the witticisms from the "hyuck, hyuck - well Opera users aren't average - either of them" crowd.)
This is a good thing. Opera has been a company which has been dedicated to (among other things like speed, security and innovations in the interface) support for web standards. This is just another step in that direction.
Kudos to the desktop crew for this accomplishment.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
This is really cool that competition has provoked a response from the browsers to be compliant, but until IE is compliant, does it make a lick of difference? The combined market share of these ACID3 browsers is ~25%, so in the scheme of things, I'm still not going to be developing sites that take advantage of the newest features.
IE8 is still puttering around with ACID2...so I hate to sound like the cynic...
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Sorry, I was beaten by 2 minutes (several times). No other posts showed up when I was double-checking Zonk's links. Of course, it looks like a bunch of me-toos if the time-stamps aren't looked at, rather than a chorus.
:)
The surprising thing is that 30 minutes later, Zonk still hasn't noticed the mistake.
Err.... Safari is at 100% with safari close behind at 98%? Think one safari too many
Question is which one is opera and which is safari - and does it really matter?
How many sites out there will only work with Acid3 compliant browsers? I'd guess... 1 - the test site itself. Even if other sites look better with 100% compliance I doubt if the entire site will be unusable or so poorly rendered as to be unusable.
Bragging rights in this game is like boasting of having a car that can do 150 while your mate's can only do 145 - bloody pointless as those speeds are only any good on a race track, on a dry day, with a driver who knows how to get the last mph out of their car... most people won't notice the 5mph difference.
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
... But what I want to know is if reaching a perfect score necessarily means that the implementations are sound.
... the recently discovered flaws in Win32 Safari spring to mind.
Maybe some quick and dirty code was used that in the end wont prove stable, safe,
It just strike me as odd that Acid 2 compliance took so long as opposed to what we are seeing now with acid 3.
Update: 03/26 21:21 GMT by Z : Safari is now at 100%, apparently, with Safari close behind at 98%. Hunh? Typo!
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
Then your 2.3 Ghz Core 2 machine must be pants. Scrolling on FF3b4 makes my 2,2Ghz Core2Duo go from 3% idling to 40% with some maniacal scrolling going on. This on Vista46 SP1... So let it go already
If this were news about IE, I'd care. If it were news about Firefox, I'd care. Since I'm a Mac user, if it were news about Safari I'd probably care, at least a little (although I use Firefox). But Opera? I don't even test my stuff against that browser - it's just never been particularly relevant.
Now, I realize that Opera zealotry is as fervent as the worst Mac fans, and loses nothing to the Nikon/Canon camps; but really - the installed base is tiny. When I look at my site stats, Opera doesn't even show up (and even Netscape 4.x still has a tiny sliver of the pie). So I'm not sure even the "competition is good for everyone" argument particularly applies here.
#DeleteChrome
Maybe they're too busy adding actual features to the browser instead of competing in pointless tests to show how well it'll handle crazy error conditions that'll never actually happen on the web-at-large. God forbid.
Comment of the year
That would imply a correlation between standards compliance and browser adoption. Someone should probably tell MS :-)
Seriously, though, Acid3 compliance is mostly an academic exercise at this point. It's a great goal to shoot for, but making wholesale changes to their core rendering engine for the sake of bragging rights isn't really a good use of their time.
Back and forth would be my guess.
I'm very happy to see both Safari and Opera take the Acid3 test so seriously. However, despite Safari's 98/100 score, I still have problems with Midas/DocumentMode issues. This affects the basic installation of TinyMCE, an extremely popular editor for blogging software. It is used in Confluence, Joomla, Mambo, and many other software projects.
I also know there are places where Safari simply renders pages illegibly. I've seen this on Joomla forums where Safari cannot render the boxes on top of a forum post correctly (see for an example. Here "home", "threaded views", "home", and "help" are not rendered correctly in Safari.
I know most of this has to do with non-standard behavior first instituted by Microsoft (who else), but IE represents about 80% of the browser market, so when Microsoft creates a standard like Midas/DocumentMode, it becomes an important part of the Web. FireFox and Opera have no problems with this. Unfortunately, Safari, the browser that hews so closely to WC3 standards simply cannot be used on many websites.
Because, until corporations get rid of all the crappy code they've written that requires ActiveX which is IE only (ACID or not ACID), there's still a real hook to use IE.
Wow, the Safari team should be ashamed. Instead of specifically testing for the Acid 3 test, they are specifically testing for a webfont that Acid 3 uses.
I've seen a lot of people make jokes about (usually IE) behaving differently if it detected the Acid 2 test, and I thought it was ridiculous to imagine that anybody would ever actually do that. But now I see that Apple really is doing it.
Shit like this is not going to help the web in the least.
You can develop for whatever target you want. That doesn't change the fact that many people on slashdot will want to install/use an ACID3 browser, which is why this is news for nerds. Plus it can potentially give geeks bragging rights about their favorite browser. It doesn't have to be popular to be your favorite.
:)
Not everyone on slashdot is a web developer. Some of us actually consider browsers to be tools for browsing teh Intarweb.
(Beyond that, some of us develop sites for use by Linux users, and could give a rat's ass what IE's overall market share is when our users are 75-99% non-IE.)
Your point is well taken for that fraction of slashdot users that develop commercial mainstream websites, though. But then any commercial mainstream web developers who have to be told that IE is their primary target are probably too stupid to survive much longer anyway.
The only that i would like to say is that Acid3 nuked really fast.
At least the Acid2 ghosted the browser market for at least 2 years (correct me if i am wrong).
Acid3 passed in a less that a month.
It seems at last that the Acid3 wasn't so hard at all. Someone didn't do really good job (kidding).
...features that every other major browser has already implemented, apparently.
Remember the days when websites would yell at you telling you that you needed to use a certain version of an OS, with a certain version of a certain browser, with the latest pre-alpha VRML plugin and 1024x768 resolution?
Now, you don't even need a computer to browse the web.
That is progress.
I use Safari at home and Firefox at work (both with flash blockers), and I can do anything.
Back when Microsoft tried to take over the web, I had many issues with many sites. I don't remember the last problem I've had viewing a website.
And this is without government regulation or anything.
Next up, standards for multimedia on the web.
Wow. Spoken like someone who has never developed a website.
The speed at which the browsers seem to be gaining acid3 compatibility is frankly worrying me.
Some people are just NEVER satisfied... :)
you had me at #!
Umm... Never "held" onto it.
And then there's Safari, whose rendering engine is open source. I don't think it has anything to do with closed source.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
More seriously, I suspect the mountain of cruft that firefox inherited from its netscape origins is dragging them down. Coding cleanly slows you down at the start, but eventually you'll soar ahead.
I am trolling
Firefox 3 is late in the beta cycle. They should be focusing on stabilization right now, not bunches of changes to site rendering.
Similarly, all this work on Opera is not likely to show up in 9.5, for exactly the same reason. It'll probably show up in Opera 10 (or 9.6, or whatever they end up calling it).
If there's anywhere to work on Firefox 4 stuff, that would be where I'd look for Acid3-related changes.
The "zealotry" is answer to unfair dissing of Opera. The company is working really hard on their browser and promotion of web standards, and yet from the general public all they get is "x%? I don't give a shit".
In the US the browser alone might not be directly relevant, but Opera Software influenced the market quite a bit: IE8 was released soon after Opera filed complaint to EU and IE8's big news is passing Opera CTO's Acid2 test. Opera taken lead role in WHATWG and started implementing [X]HTML5. Before that W3C didn't consider any major revisions of HTML4 or XHTML1.
They really deserve some more respect.
True. It's only Firefox that sucks.
Yeah, how I long for the good old days when netscape and IE just tried to add features as fast as they could, without stopping to check whether they were adhering to any sort of standard whatsoever.
Having benchmarks like this makes plenty of sense. Otherwise the "standard" becomes "behaves like the most popular browser". Which creates a viscious cycle which quickly eliminates competition. Is that really what you want?
Please give me a STABLE 64-bit build for Linux (.deb preferable) and a public bug-tracker.
-one-who-wants-to-stop-using-firefox-and-thinks-konqueror-sucks-without-webkit
This doesn't test "the standard", this tests one particular facet of it: how you handle errors in code.
No browser can implement "the standard" until W3C or someone makes a reference implementation that displays the page according to the standard-- guaranteed. Then Firefox, IE, Safari, etc can just match the reference implementation and everyone's happy.
Of course that'll never happen, because it makes too much damned sense and this is the web.
Comment of the year
Apples to oranges, coward.
You're talking about bugs that cause your application to crash or destructively malfunction in some way. ACID tests bugs that might cause the menu to be 3 pixels further left than you want it. And the funny part is that as long as all browsers have difference, you'll STILL need to test on all browsers (for JS issues alone if nothing else), so you'll notice the ACID-type bugs long before putting the site live.
Sorry, I think these ACID tests are near-useless.
Comment of the year
I'd say the antitrust case, even though just a slap on the wrist, did slow MS down and that is one of the reasons that the internet has improved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
http://webkit.org/blog/173/webkit-achieves-acid3-100100-in-public-build/
http://webkit.org/blog/173/webkit-achieves-acid3-100100-in-public-build/
myselfmusic
I think Apple deserve some credit here. When 'problem' websites were reported to them, they seem to have done some very effective outreach work with webmasters, as well as fixing their own bugs.
Safari 3.1 is the latest 'stable release' of the WebKit core.
You can download 'unstable nightly releases' from webkit.org, and as of 6:55 pm (in whatever timezone WebKit.org uses,) the latest nightly release gets 100/100.
Which means they one-up Opera, since the Opera beta that gets 100/100 isn't available to the public. (And, from their own screenshot, isn't even a functional browser the way WebKit is. The WebKit nightly builds are essentially the Safari browser interface using the latest WebKit core.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Since Opera can identify itself as IE or another browser and, many people set it to be IE to get sites to let it operate, it is hard to get an accurate measure of the browser's position in the market.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
There was a bug in the Acid3 test suite. That bug prevented WebKit from getting a 100/100 score. Now, that the bug is fixed, WebKit is scoring 100/100. How Opera could have scored 100/100 before the test was fixed is beyond me.
What's more, since WebKit is released nightly, WebKit is the first publicly released browser to score 100/100 on the Acid 3 tests.
BTW, as both teams will point out, scoring 100/100 on the Acid3 test doesn't mean the browser "passed" the Acid3 test. It has to match the reference page pixel for pixel and its rendering has to be smooth. Opera is off by a couple of pixels in its rendering. WebKit is pixel-perfect, but Test 26 takes too long to complete.
And, Opera could still be the first officially released non-beta browser to score 100/100 on the Acid3 test.
Back when Microsoft tried to take over the web, I had many issues with many sites. I don't remember the last problem I've had viewing a website.
Well, as a counterexample Fedex just updated their on-line shipping site and it pops up with an "Error Window" stating that Opera is not a supported browser. The last version elicited no such negative response. Opera seems to work just fine with the Fedex site, but I think Fedex is moving in the wrong direction by being more picky rather than less. And yes, I know you can configure Opera to spoof another browser so the error window doesn't pop up, but that's not the point.
No way! Safari is in front of Safari!
What are you - a Safari hater?
Safari! Safari! Safari!
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
The WebKit folks have scored 100/100 on the test. But in the process of making WebKit conform, they found a bug in the test itself that would have forced a violation of the SVG standard to pass, so it wasn't possible to get a valid 100/100 on the test. That renders Opera's score invalid, and they're back to 99/100.
According to the WebKit people, though, this doesn't actually mean they've passed because the animation may not be as smooth as it's supposed to be. But the rendering itself matches the reference rendering perfectly.
http://trac.webkit.org/projects/webkit/changeset/31322
http://brandonbloom.name
Webkit (Safari's engine) has hit the 100% mark, but as they themselves point out the animation "smoothness" ain't there just yet.
I don't consider the smoothness to be a critical thing personally, but the test designers do (and it's something I can understand -- you don't want one browser rendering beautiful and smooth while another is jerking and jumping all over the place).
Ignoring the whole debate over whether Opera's "100%" is valid and what it means to be a "released browser" that hits 100%, I'm still waiting for a pass that meets the full spirit of the test - Full rendering compliance & full animation smoothness - THAT (imho) is what is going to decide who won the race to pass ACID 3.
/~mikeg
As an iPhone guy I've got one nagging question -- When will we see a mobile browser that passes ACID 3 (and is it even possible with today's mobile hardware?)
Currently Mobile Safari chokes on ACID 3, and I think this is as much a deficiency of the hardware (not enough CPU power/RAM?) as it is of the rendering engine.
Any mobile platform experts care to weigh in on this one? I know at least one of the ACID 3 tests is a "performance" test, so do you think it's possible to get acceptable performance out of mobile hardware?
/~mikeg
I just downloaded the Safari nightly, it gets 100, I see no jerkiness - it is silky smooth (I do have a Mac Pro though), the rendering is EXACT.
From where I am looking, and with what I am looking at Webkit/Safari is the clear AVAILABLE winner....
Umm.. Since around 11PM tonight (if not earlier), Safari has gotten 100/100.
Proof at: http://box.jaredbinder.com:443/acid3.swf
As many people above me have been pointing out, it appears WebKit, not Opera, is actually the first to score a 100/100 on the Acid3 test and also is the first to get a pixel-perfect rendering.
From Ian Hickson's blog (editor of the Acid3 test): "Just as Reddit is celebrating Opera reaching 100/100, with the misleading headline Opera the first browser to pass the Acid3 test (hey, submitter: it wouldn't hurt to read the Opera blog post before submitting it to Reddit), the Apple guys track me down and point out that there's yet another bug in the test. With heycam's help, we have now fixed the test. Again. This presumably means Opera is now at 99/100... the race continues!"
Also, as of at least 6:55pm on Wednesday (going by the Surfin' Safari blog, build r31356), Safari scores a 100/100 on the Acid3 test as well as having a pixel-perfect rendering. This doesn't count as a full pass yet though, as test 26, which is a performance test, is still taking too long (although it appears WebKit also has the fastest implemntation of that). Many people are reporting that on fast machines the test still renders smoothly, which is a bit subjective.
At the end of the day though Acid3 is still going to be relevant for quite a long time, as both Firefox and IE still have some work to do before passing it. Firefox is a ways ahead although has some SVG issues that might delay a full pass, and IE, well... IE is IE.
When I reported a (fairly serious) issue with Safari on my new calculation project website, it was fixed within a couple of weeks. I don't really know if it had anything to do with my report, but I like to dream...
Is that the rendering engine for firefox Win and firefox on apple?
Especially when you consider IE, also closed source, which is still barely passing acid2 in beta versions, and still gets less than 20% on acid3.
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...does it do *Acid4* !?
.... somebody telling me he does not fancy serving 25% of our potential costumers.
:-P
Wish that when I find a new job is not as your boss
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Opera is finding its way into mobile devices, where it is a major player.
...
It you are not catering to mobile users, you may be missing the next gravy train
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Suck it!
-Avid Opera User
So now that we have 100% Acid3 compliance, we can really see how badly all those web designers have f*****d up over the last 15 years. Is it just me, or do you prefer seeing the web looking "nice" or looking compliant ? Because for me, Opera even at 9.0 still made a complete mess of hyperlinks, overlaying a vertical column of links with the CSS coloured text-background of the previous one. He just can't seem to get font heights worked out :-(
Sometimes I really want to put a notice for IE users saying - "You are using an inferior and less secure browser. Please use Opera/Firefox/Safari etc. for a better browsing experience".
The Internet Book Database
which is totally what she said
Probably because the actual rendering side is pretty unimportant at this stage...
Firefox is already massively ahead of IE, and most websites are designed to be compatible with IE, therefore all the effort safari/opera developers are expending implementing new CSS features is largely wasted, as noone will actually use them until a majority of their audience can see them.
Firefox already supports a lot of features that never get used on websites, simply because no version of IE supports them. Adding more won't help them improve performance, reduce memory usage or win over any new users. The devs are concentrating on features that are actually useful right now.
IE has been stifling the web for years, it has done more harm to innovation on the web than anything else, and the sooner it dies off the better.
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Surely this would depend on the complexity of the page, and how much it needs to render as it scrolls up/down... You can't really compare you're cpu usage to the other guys without knowing what pages he had open, as well as what extensions he had, what screen resolution he was using, etc etc...
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