But we haven't even mastered Acid2!

A drawing of a cartoon man pointing upwards

Heads up! This post was written in 2008, so it may contain information that is no longer accurate. I keep posts like this around for historical purposes and to prevent link rot, so please keep this in mind as you're reading.

— Cory

Safari was the first mainstream browser to pass the Acid2 Test now. Opera was a close second. Firefox finally nailed it down with version 3. Even Micrsoft, back in December, announced that IE8 passes the Acid2 Test. Web browsers have certainly come a long way towards standards compliance...or have they?

From the WaSP:

The Acid3 Test is designed to test specifications for Web 2.0, and exposes potential flaws in implementations of the public ECMAScript 262 and W3C Document Object Model 2 standards. Collectively known as DOM Scripting, it is these technologies that enable advanced page interactivity and power many advanced web applications such as web-based email and online office applications.

As a series of 100 mini-tests, Acid3 has already been found to expose flaws in all tested browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. WaSP hopes that Acid3 will prove useful to browser makers during the development of future versions of their products.

Just as no browser properly rendered the Acid2 Test when it was released, no browser currently renders the Acid3 Test properly. Will history repeat itself, or will Opera, Firefox, or maybe even IE8 take the lead and pass the Acid3 test first?