Opera 10 Alpha 1 Released, Aces Acid 3 Test

Khuffie writes "It seems that the upcoming version of Opera 10, of which the first Alpha has recently been released, has already passed the Acid 3 test with a 100/100. The only other rendering engine to have a complete score is WebKit, which can be seen in Google Chrome's nightly build. Opera 10 Alpha 1 will also finally include auto-updates, inline spell checking, and see some improvements to its built-in mail client, including much-requested rich text composition."

Comments

Acid is just a dick size comparison anyway...

[clone53421]

From a user's perspective: Yes, it's cool to pass the Acid tests, but unless one of my favourite websites breaks in Firefox (or IE, for the less geeky among us), I really won't care.

From a developer's perspective: Until the really atrocious browsers (*cough*IE*cough*) get up to standard, developers will continue to have headaches coding for cross-browser compatibility anyway. Currently, you have to test for "IE" and "everything else" (ok, so you need to test in all the non-IE browsers for completeness' sake, but if it works in one of them it's very likely going to work in all of them).

Re:Acid is just a dick size comparison anyway...

[Phroggy]

From a user's perspective: Yes, it's cool to pass the Acid tests, but unless one of my favourite websites breaks in Firefox (or IE, for the less geeky among us), I really won't care.

If both Firefox and Opera pass the Acid tests, then there's a very good chance that your favorite web sites won't break in either of them. Passing Acid3 is not a reason to switch to Opera. Passing Acid3 removes a reason why you might not want to switch. If you're perfectly happy with your current browser and have no other reasons to consider switching, feel free to ignore this announcement.

From a developer's perspective: Until the really atrocious browsers (*cough*IE*cough*) get up to standard, developers will continue to have headaches coding for cross-browser compatibility anyway. Currently, you have to test for "IE" and "everything else" (ok, so you need to test in all the non-IE browsers for completeness' sake, but if it works in one of them it's very likely going to work in all of them).

Internet Explorer 8 passes Acid2; Microsoft is definitely working on getting "up to standard". Neither IE nor Firefox pass Acid3 yet, but it's definitely a goal that Microsoft and Mozilla should be aiming for. The purpose of the Acid tests is to highlight areas where some browsers don't precisely adhere to W3C recommendations; if these issues can be corrected in the browsers, so that all browsers behave the same way, then developers' lives will become MUCH easier. Indeed, as you point out, the current situation is that you only really have to test for IE and "everything else"; this is a dramatic improvement from the days of testing for IE on Windows and IE on Mac and Mozilla and Opera and Safari, and there would be significant differences between all of them. IE8 will mean a huge leap forward in cross-browser compatibility, and the Acid tests are one reason why.

Re:Meh..

[moderatorrater]

Competition is almost invariably a good thing for users, but in the case of web browsers, all it does is force the developers to add countless new "features" to "stay ahead of the competition" instead of spending that time making it do the things it already does the way it should.

Like passing the ACID test? Like giving you a start page that's ridiculously useful? Like making tabbed browsing work? Like making sure that everything runs in its own process?

What exactly would you like to see the browser do better? It seems to me that they're refining things faster than they're adding features.

Re:Meh..

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Firefox had this years ago, seriously is this accurate, Opera just got these?

Now you know how Opera users feel every single time there's a FireFox upgrade story.