IE On Acid
2 that is…
To frontend developers IE is the bane of our existence. It takes one street smart designer to overcome the lack of compliance to web standards. The next release of IE 8 will overcome those obstacles. IE 8 developers announced that IE 8 passed the Acid2 test implemented by the Web Standards Project.
Acid2 was implemented by the Web Standards Project as a test to help vendors building browsers test their compliancy to web standards. It was written by Ian Hickson in 2005. Previously there was the Box Acid Test which Acid2 replaced.
Acid2 tests the following web standards:
- Alpha transparency on PNG images
- The object element
- Absolute, relative and fixed positioning using CSS
- The CSS box model
- CSS tables
- CSS margins
- CSS generated content
- CSS parsing
- Paint order
- CSS line heights
- Hovering effects
Many of the browser vendors have worked hard at passing the Acid2 test. And while it seemed as though Microsoft was ignoring web standards, it’s official Internet Explorer 8 does pass the Acid2 test. They even released a video of it as seen here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=367207
In the world of web design this is great news. I don’t know how many times IE has made me bang my head against the keyboard. Of course the key to this success will be the adoption rate from users. It’s still a step in the right direction.
Web Out
Des
Alicia:
This is an excellent point. It’s not all about what the browser can do but how to get all the users to upgrade to the newer usually better browser and make our lives easier. Quite interesting on my web stats 70% of people use IE. With the version 6 and 7 about tie for the percentage of users. Quite amazing when you think IE7 was released quite awhile ago, you think people would have upgraded by now.
Desirea Herrera:
User upgrades are a lot slower these days than they used to be. There are a lot less bells and whistles to entice users. They are concerned with the web standards and they aren’t as technologically knowledgeable as the user base used to be in the early days.
Many users go by the motto “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” The browser works in most sites so there is no impetus to upgrade the browser they have installed.
What Do You Think?