Acid3
The Acid3 test is out. Ironic that this one comes towards the end of a Gecko development cycle (just like Acid2), meaning it will likely be a while (Mozilla2, the basis of what will likely be Firefox 4.0) until Acid3 compliance is met.
Seems like the WebKit guys are well on their way.
By the time Acid3 complaint browsers are the norm, web applications will have a very nice platform of features that they can depend on. These tests really do help coordinate browser vendors to focus on certain issues by providing a good test case that they can all compare (and compete) against.
Tags: acid3, firefox, gecko, Mozilla, WebKit
March 3rd, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Yeah, I hope with Acid4 the timing will suck less for Mozilla. Of course, this is one reason to go for shorter release cycles. If an update to Firefox came out every 3-6 months, it would never be a bad time for the test to come out.
(Acid3 took about 10 months development time from start to finish.)
March 3rd, 2008 at 9:40 pm
@Ian Hickson: Agreed on the shorter release cycle bit. Though I can see the advantage of longer release cycles (more time to let larger changes mature).
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:36 pm
I like the longer dev cycle. You can then get a bunch of bigger changes/progress instead of smaller changes or one or two sizable changes. Those big changes like the switch to cairo and the reflow overhaul really did need this time get all of the bugs out and get performance going for cairo.
Plus a cycle that short would probably result in having two releases from a single gecko branch like what happened with FF 1.5 & 2. Which that doesn’t really help speed up improving the level of standards support.
Perhaps after Moz2/FF4 the list of large changes will dwindle enough that faster cycles can follow.
March 3rd, 2008 at 11:37 pm
> By the time Acid3 complaint browsers are the
> norm, web applications will have a very nice
> platform of features that they can depend on.
Incidentally, perhaps, since passing Acid3 will take time. But what does Acid3 have to do with the claim about web applications? What features that web applications want to depend on but can’t are tested by Acid3? The specified parts of the DOM (which is what Acid3 largely tests) are mostly interoperably implemented in all modern UAs. The pain points are in things which aren’t specified (yet).
March 4th, 2008 at 12:34 am
Can I have a “complaint” browser?
March 4th, 2008 at 5:25 am
I think right now Gecko 1.9 is the most-compliant rendering engine, but even then it only gets around 50-60%.
Acid2 also came out at a difficult time for Mozilla, just as Gecko 1.8 was being finalised. I doubt that WaSP are deliberately targeting Mozilla in this way but the timing is unfortunate.
March 4th, 2008 at 5:34 am
Sigh, yet another useless test that doesn’t reflect what is out there on the web.
But in the meantime it will suck up developer time that could better be used to fix real bugs.
March 4th, 2008 at 6:12 am
@Martijn WTF?! Write your own test, give it a funky name and then promote it.
I’d love to see two competing tests.
March 4th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
@Martijn: It’s really not useless. It’s a list of bugs that have long bothered developers. You had the ability to submit your own tests for consideration as well.
September 29th, 2008 at 8:27 am
WebKit passed Acid3 fully for the first time on Friday. So it’s 100 subtests of 100 passed now.
Opera 9.60 Beta scored 85.