My OperaCongrats to Safari on Acid 3
Thursday, March 27, 2008 12:45:48 PM
Many congratulations to the WebKit team on the first public release of Safari that passes Acid3 - the first browser to do so! 
This is on the same day that Opera announce reaching 100/100 on the Javascript part of Acid3. Congratulations all round!
The Acid tests are great for bragging rights, but it's important to remember that they test only a tiny fraction of the web technology browsers and developers use. Jeff Schiller points out that while Acid3 has some SMIL tests, the Acid3-passing Safari only passes 5 out 116 SVG animation tests. In other words, SVG animation is still probably unusable in Safari.
Opera doesn't pass Acid1, but that hasn't stopped it from passing Acid2, almost passing Acid3, and being a great all-round browser. The current release of Firefox doesn't even pass Acid2, but that doesn't seem to be causing them any problems.
Ian Hickson has expressed surprise that Acid3 was conquered so soon. It make me feel that perhaps Acid3 spent too much time testing little-used corner cases, that while important, aren't the sort of things web developers are really looking for.
The Acid tests provide a nice, high-profile publicity point for browser developers. They're a quick "media bite" for journalists and those not too familiar with web technology. However, I'm not so sure they progress web standards support that much.
I think I'd much rather see more effort put into developing comprehensive test suites for the various standards. Microsoft recently submitted a CSS2 test suite to the W3C. That type of thing seems to me to be a more productive use of developer's time.
I'm hoping the next Acid test (they'll just keep on coming!) will include features that web developers are wanting to use now. That's not saying the existing Acid tests don't already do that, but I'm thinking of things like rounded corners and multi-column support. I know that the specs for those aren't even done yet - that's why they need to be accelerated and tested. A high-profile test that encourages implementation of useful things, but is still capable of being changed in response to developer experience is what's needed IMHO. I don't think we should be waiting for specs to finalize in their own time. Judicious implementation and testing should be able to force things along faster.
Acid3 is still so new it squeaks, but I'm already looking forward to Acid4!
This is on the same day that Opera announce reaching 100/100 on the Javascript part of Acid3. Congratulations all round!
The Acid tests are great for bragging rights, but it's important to remember that they test only a tiny fraction of the web technology browsers and developers use. Jeff Schiller points out that while Acid3 has some SMIL tests, the Acid3-passing Safari only passes 5 out 116 SVG animation tests. In other words, SVG animation is still probably unusable in Safari.
Opera doesn't pass Acid1, but that hasn't stopped it from passing Acid2, almost passing Acid3, and being a great all-round browser. The current release of Firefox doesn't even pass Acid2, but that doesn't seem to be causing them any problems.
Ian Hickson has expressed surprise that Acid3 was conquered so soon. It make me feel that perhaps Acid3 spent too much time testing little-used corner cases, that while important, aren't the sort of things web developers are really looking for.
The Acid tests provide a nice, high-profile publicity point for browser developers. They're a quick "media bite" for journalists and those not too familiar with web technology. However, I'm not so sure they progress web standards support that much.
I think I'd much rather see more effort put into developing comprehensive test suites for the various standards. Microsoft recently submitted a CSS2 test suite to the W3C. That type of thing seems to me to be a more productive use of developer's time.
I'm hoping the next Acid test (they'll just keep on coming!) will include features that web developers are wanting to use now. That's not saying the existing Acid tests don't already do that, but I'm thinking of things like rounded corners and multi-column support. I know that the specs for those aren't even done yet - that's why they need to be accelerated and tested. A high-profile test that encourages implementation of useful things, but is still capable of being changed in response to developer experience is what's needed IMHO. I don't think we should be waiting for specs to finalize in their own time. Judicious implementation and testing should be able to force things along faster.
Acid3 is still so new it squeaks, but I'm already looking forward to Acid4!
You must be 
Tim AltmanJunyor # Friday, March 28, 2008 2:41:23 PM
Kittyferdenantlom # Friday, December 18, 2009 1:42:06 PM