The supposed be-all/end-all for testing a browser’s worth is whether it scores a 100 on the Acid3 test.
I don’t pay attention to these tests because compatibility doesn’t really count for much; this is especially true since the vast majority of web sites fail (and fail hard) the W3C Validation Service (Google.com even fails that test badly). If web designers don’t care if they pass W3C, why should we care about Acid3?
For you Firefox users out there, you’ll notice the brand new Fx 4 does not score a 100. Does this mean the browser is “bad”? Of course not, and this is why. The “failure” has to do with features almost nobody save for web designers actually care about – and you’re probably not a web designer.
Why are web standards so largely ignored?
The reason standards are either given an “Eh, whatever” response is because browsers by nature are programmed to be very forgiving when it comes to rendering web pages. For example, if you were designing a table with the old-school <table> tag in your web page, if you forgot to close out the markup with </table>, guess what? The table still displays as it should even though the code is completely improper – and that’s just one of hundreds of examples where the browser does its job even if the code is flat-out wrong.
If you ever run into anyone that says a browser is “bad” because it doesn’t pass some specific test that nobody cares about, ignore them. Use whatever browser you want, because for day-to-day browsing, nobody cares if a browser passes with perfect scores or not.
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Haha, love it.. still using my favorite browsers whether they fail or not..
I don’t think the point of ACID3 or any of its predecessors was to actually see browsers achieve 100%. Better that they aspire for ‘close to’ 100% – this at least gets them (consistently) moving in the right direction. Typically when a new test is devised the browsers of the day score very (and I mean very) low.
Would actually be nice to know what the state of the art browsers of the day scored when the various tests were publicly released.
End users of browsers probably shouldn’t consider these tests. Web designers, developers and other web professionals probably should care. As browsers across the board score better marks we start to be able to use new features – sometimes we have to wait a year or two for the browser with the highest market share (you know who I mean) to start supporting the standards – but tests such as these show those actively involved where the web is heading.
Just my tuppence.
Dean Marshall
PS: the w3c validators have their issues and can’t be taken entirely at face value. For example – CSS standards allow for vendor specific rules prefixed with a – (hyphen). The CSS validator simply dismisses these as errors and invalid when actually they aren’t.