Browsers on Acid

The Web Standards Project, or WaSP, created a test many moons ago that was meant to test web browsers. The Acid2 Test puts web browsers through a rigorous test of standards prowess.

The test basically has code that should only, by standards accounts, be rendered one way. Most of the code is very advanced HTML and CSS techniques. Some of it is actually older code that should not be rendered at all. This is all part of the test. One problem browsers have now is that they don’t ignore old or badly laptop battery coded HTML (Internet Explorer, I’m looking at you).

Passing this test is the current gold-standard for a web browser. However, no browsers (not even the mighty Firefox) have been able to pass it…until now.

A few weeks ago, Apple released an update to its operating system pass drug test Mac OS X Tiger. With this update came a new version of Safari. David Hyatt, one of the chief engineers behind Webkit (Safari’s rendering engine) made a point to study the Acid2 test and make Safari conform to it. So now Safari is the first full version browser to support the Acid2 test.

This does not mean Safari conforms to every single web standard. It just means it has corrected the problems made apparent by the test. It also means it’s getting very close.

To see how your browser stacks up, just visit the Acid2 Test page and take the test. Have fun.