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Internet Explorer 8 Passes the Acid2 Browser Test

December 19th, 2007 at 9:03 PM (17 years ago) by Matt Freedman

Last week (on December 12, 2007), the latest build of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) successfully passed the Acid2 Browser Test, says the official IEBlog. If you’re unfamiliar with the Acid2 Test, basically it’s a test for browsers, that uses some valid and invalid CSS (and some (X)HTML, of course) to make a smiley face. It’s meant to test browsers for their support for handling valid and invalid code. Here’s how the Acid2 test is supposed to be rendered:

Acid2 Browser Test - Perfect Rendering

Here’s how the latest build of IE8 renders it:

Acid2 Browser Test - Internet Explorer 8 Rendering

For reference, here’s how IE7 renders it (click for larger view):

Acid2 Browser Test - Internet Explorer 7

Here’s how FireFox 2.0.11 renders it (click for larger view):

Acid2 Browser Test - FireFox 2.0.11

…And here’s how FireFox 3 Beta 2 Renders it:

Acid2 Browser Test - FireFox 3 Beta 2

Hopefully this is just the beginning of great changes coming in IE8.

Update [December 18, 2007 at 10:43 PM]: Apparently, the Acid2 test is broken since about today (so, IE8 did actually pass the working Acid2, as that screenshot was taken on December 12, 2007). So here’s how FireFox 3 Beta 2 renders the working copy of Acid2. (thanks Asa Dotzler for letting me know about this!)

Acid2 Browser Test (working copy) - FireFox 3 Beta 2

4 Responses to “Internet Explorer 8 Passes the Acid2 Browser Test”

  1. Asa Dotzler
    Asa Dotzler says:

    firefox 3, including betas and most of the alphas for the last year render the ACID2 test accurately. Your screenshot is the result of a the test being broken, not the Firefox browser.

    – A

  2. Matt Freedman
    Matt Freedman says:

    @Asa: I highly doubt that the test is broken. I think that FireFox 3 just doesn’t pass the test.

  3. Asa Dotzler
    Asa Dotzler says:

    Matt, well, in this case you’d be wrong. The test is indeed broken, in particular, “not found” pages are served as 200 instead of 404. Safari and Opera will show you the same. You can go here to see a working version of the test (from the test author) http://www.hixie.ch/tests/evil/acid/002/ and you can read his acknowledgment of the bustedness of the public test here https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=289480#c172

    -A

  4. Matt Freedman
    Matt Freedman says:

    Asa, hmm… interesting. Thanks for your input! I’ll update my post now.

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