David Storey - Jeremy and Eric on the Acid 3 race

Jeremy and Eric on the Acid 3 race

Friday, 28. March 2008, 17:37:54

While at the Web App Summit yesterday, I was sitting next to Jeremy Keith and mentioned I was quite tired as we were racing with WebKit to become the first browser to pass Acid 3. Jeremy then posted the following fairly humorous Twitter post (edited for more family friendly language):

Suggesting to David Storey that, instead of bickering with Webkit about acid3, they just whip out their [male body parts] and start measuring. - Jeremy Keith

Eric Meyer replied on Twitter with the following:

@adactio +1 on that. Not only would it be as productive and relevant, but also would be done right away. Plus they could sell the video. - Eric Meyer

Firstly, it would be anatomically impossible for our female developers to do this. More seriously, I'd have to disagree with Eric's reply. The extent of our bickering with WebKit is pushing each other to pass Acid 3 quicker. This can only be a good thing. You could argue how relevant the tests are in the Acid tests, but that we are both committed to improving our standards support is only a good thing (and much better than measuring things).

I'm not quite sure how making sure we have support for the likes of RGBA, HSLA and Web Fonts, while ensuring at least some support for SVG. These are quite important web standards. When IE finally supports Acid 3, we'll actually be able to start looking at using SVG in real web sites.

One of the things this test shows (as well as Acid 2) is that developers love competition. I think this is human nature. It is much more motivating to fix difficult issues, if there is a test to pass with a success criteria. Becoming the first team to pass that test is something to be proud of. As people are competing, issues in the spec are often found and fixed faster too. I'm really glad Opera and Apple are going toe to toe improving standards support. I just wish it had some of my favorite standards that I want to be supported: the various properties from the CSS3 backgrounds and borders module (although the spec isn't finalised yet), and SVG as a CSS background-image.

Currently WebKit and Opera only have performance issues left, so any further progress wont benefit standards so much, but I wish Mozilla and Microsoft luck on passing the DM and rendering test. Maybe Mozilla nad Microsoft can have their own personal duel together.

On the video comment, Opera supports Ogg Theora, while WebKit supports Quicktime in the HTML5 video element, so the videos would be incompatible anyway

Opera passes two out of three Acid 3 tests in public buildOpera Dragonfly arriving soon

Comments

Romain Vigier # 28. March 2008, 18:31

On the video comment, Opera supports Ogg Theora, while WebKit supports Quicktime in the HTML5 video element, so the videos would be incompatible anyway

... Unless you install Ogg Theora codecs for QuickTime

...

Fully agree with you on the relevancy of the Acid3 test.

Anonymous # 28. March 2008, 23:22

Jeff Croft writes:

Here's the thing about the Acid test: while they're not all that relevant and certainly not perfect by any means, they're by far the best thing we've got. Browser makes need a reference implementation of the spec to of off, and they don't have one. Acid tests give them some semblance of a reference to shoot far.

While I think Jeremy and Eric were just joking around (and I found it quite funny), I do agree that the "race" towards passing Acid 3 is a good thing, overall. It's too bad we can't be racing towards something even more relevant, but right now, Acid 3 is the best thing we've got.

Anonymous # 29. March 2008, 02:17

Eric Meyer writes:

Are you quite sure it can only be a good thing? Or could it possibly be a good and bad thing all at once? (Not that it's any secret what I think, of course.)

Ice Ardor # 29. March 2008, 06:03

//Negligably on-topic:
I want quicktime to die. If it didn't insist on having its startup procedure in Windows, even after you disable it from msconfig, then maybe I wouldn't hate quicktime. But I had to rename the exe so it wouldn't virally start up every time I boot my computer. After reinstalling my OS, I've relied purely on players like VLC and Media Player Classic to play quicktime videos. I will NOT install that crapware.

Anonymous # 29. March 2008, 07:51

Anonymous writes:

use sysinternals utilities like Autoruns to clear QT garbage and interest yourself in qucik time alternative, it is just the codec without the bloat

Anonymous # 31. March 2008, 17:27

Nicholas Shanks writes:

David: Please write your own Backgrounds & Borders test then :)
You could name it Corrosive1 or Bleach1 or something…

David Storey # 31. March 2008, 18:36

Eric: I don't see how two browser engines committing to standards, and having fun in the process, could be anything but a good thing, no. If Safari released as is with their current engine, it would be a bad thing as they have a half baked SMIL implementation, and that would break sites that use it (not that there are many with Opera being the only desktop browser to support SVG animation). I'd be amazingly surprised if Safari did release a public official release like that though. I'd also be surprised if they release their never version not passing ACID3, so I suspect even after they've passed the standards part of the test, they'll be working to improve their SMIL support.

I know for me, ACID3 was great, as it got Opera to support some things I wanted (most notably HSLA/RGBA) faster, and it didn't really delay Kestrel at all as many of our programmers working on it worked late to get things fixed, and if you see the timeline of fixes for ACID3, Opera was already working on compatibility fixes prior to ACID3 that was improving our score. It also made Safari add CSS3 selectors faster. Acid tests for developers are like design contests for web designers I guess - a nice fun way to show what you can do and maybe get some credit for it.

Now I do think there could have been a test that is more complete, and less edge case, but there is no one stopping anyone from writing such a test. If we can come up with such a test, I'd be willing to promote it to the browser manufacturers. The W3C are crying out for CSS3 test cases, so it could be even part of that. The tests would have to be on something that isn't likely to change however.

Nicholas: I'm not the best at writing test cases, but I may just do that. Our CSS3 selectors test on CSS3.info was popular. At least Konqueror and to some extent Opera worked on passing it.