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Latest Firefox build passes Acid2!

flickr.com — The Firefox Acid2 bug (bugzilla #289480) has officially been marked as FIXED and VERIFIED, and merged into the official development build (to be part of Firefox 3). Hurray! Thanks goes especially to David Baron for his hard work on the reflow branch.

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  • crownedgriffin, on 10/12/2007, -232/+33Good job Firefox team. Welcome to the rest of the browsing world.
    • Unr3a1, on 10/12/2007, -29/+150I might get modded down for this, but... why did this have to take so long to fix?
    • noamsml, on 10/12/2007, -9/+173Except for IE, that is.
    • noamsml, on 10/12/2007, -112/+13Wrong thread. Digg this down.
    • mvent2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+179@Unr3a1:

      Firefox already had the CSS support necessary to pass Acid2. The only thing wrong with it was the reflow methods. Reflow is a very complicated part of the browser where the page must be redrawn each time new data is received. The entire reflow process was completely rewritten by two people, which is the cause for the long wait.

      Now that the reflow code is cleaner, expect inline-block support soon! :)
    • akira117, on 10/12/2007, -17/+82What is this bozo referring to?
      Opera passed it a while ago, but I don't like the layout of opera.
      IE is miles behind everyone else, like always.

      Also I don't think this test was on the top of their list.
    • barktwiggs, on 10/12/2007, -46/+16Yeah, I don't like the easily recustomisable layout of Opera either!
    • akira117, on 10/12/2007, -6/+25List of IE bugs: http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel9.InternetExplorerBugs
    • pap3rw8, on 10/12/2007, -2/+28verified as passing.

      http://cuberoot.us/ff3.png

      if you have the latest build, take the test:

      http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/
    • harikaried, on 10/12/2007, -2/+44It's not just Acid 2 that got fixed - which has been fixed for some time. It just that only until a couple days back did the code get officially combined with the rest of the code that everyone else has been working on. Now a larger number of nightly testers can look for bugs on the official nightly versions.

      From bz's blog ( http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/bz/archives/017302.html )

      Reflow branch landed

      After almost exactly two years of working on it, David Baron landed the reflow branch last night. In addition to fixing numerous bugs (including all remaining Acid2 issues) and improving layout performance some, the changes significantly simplify, the table column balancing code and block reflow. The landing lays the groundwork for implementing inline-block and inline-table display values, as well as some further optimization work.

      ** I'm amazed at David's patience with this project over the last two years, in the face of what must have been quite nasty merge conflicts on numerous occasions, and I'm glad he stuck with it! **
    • bdmbdm, on 10/12/2007, -2/+26It's good and all that FF passes the Acid2 test, but the fact is that IE is far from passing this. So there's really no need to get rattled up since web developers still have deal with IE. :
    • Odweaver, on 10/12/2007, -2/+81I like IE7s rendering of the acid 2 test
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ie7acid2.png
    • akira117, on 10/12/2007, -51/+12Yea when I get a personal website I'm gonna redirect all IE traffic to getfirefox.com.
    • aaronm67, on 10/12/2007, -11/+58@akira117

      Then you're an idiot. Redirecting 75-80% of your traffic away from your website isn't a good idea.

      I'm an Opera user. Occasionally I come across those sites that have the IE Blocker thing...from www.explorerdestroyer.com or whatever. Sometimes I see that. I don't even bother looking at the site.

      NOBODY wants to have to download and install a god damn browser just to see a website. Nobody. Ever. It will never happen. Not once.
    • podgey22, on 10/12/2007, -27/+45>> why did this have to take so long to fix?

      Because Acid2 is a really ridiculous test. The only reason anyone would proactively want to pass it is to rub other people's faces in the dirt. I repeat: there is no real-life use in passing Acid2.

      But either way... At least the opera gangbangers can stop lording that over the firefox faithfuls.
    • Cglass, on 10/12/2007, -15/+1@aaronm67

      Haha but I know damn well you open IE to view those certain sites, at least on occasion.

      Hypocrite.
    • mabhatter, on 10/12/2007, -16/+6the problem with Acid2 is that it's really just a test of extreme-fringe cases. What the code should do if you do a whole bunch of things WRONG. Unfortunately, that's not really useable in the real world (TM) because you want to write clean and neat code.. .not hacked up fringe cases...

      It doesn't really solve the cross-broswer rendering issues, because they can still handle things differently and display differently even though they pass Acid2. We need a suite of "offical" test cases that use clean code and demonstrate the features... something that shows how it "should" be not just how to handle errors. That's the trouble with web standards right now... NOBODY even the W3C has a WORKING browser that implements them ALL properly... so NOBODY can write actual 100% compliant pages using ALL the features. It's an Egg-Chicken problem... so devopers in a hurry don't bother to use web standards at all... an we're stuck with only HTML... 5 years after XHTML and CSS2!
    • piesforyou, on 10/12/2007, -1/+50"NOBODY wants to have to download and install a god damn browser just to see a website. Nobody. Ever. It will never happen. Not once."


      That sentence is pretty funny when taken out of context.
    • VargVikernes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16"Being a medical doctor, and speaking a little conversational French, I feel it's safe to say that I know more than a little about browser compliance."

      I just love posting this quote whenever web standards enter the discussion.
    • stisaac, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17How about we not talk like "I might get modded down for this but...." and just say what you want to say?
    • Matt2k, on 10/12/2007, -18/+3This is SO MIND BLOWINGLY AWESOME that I might just masturbate to it tonight. My CSS selectors are going to ***** ROCK NOW
    • Nanobe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+34Acid2 is not, as some have suggested, a pointless test. It tests a number of things, many of which I very much want to see supported in Internet Explorer. I consider Acid2 a high priority for IE (although not necessarily the highest priority). For other browsers like Firefox, Opera, and Safari, most of the problems were due to fringe case differences, but web developers do run across those differences from time to time and it's good to have these things fixed. For non-IE browsers, I wouldn't saying Acid2 was a particularly high priority, but a test suite is a test suite and it's good to resolve any differences with the standard.

      There has been some misconception that Acid2 only tested error handling. Let me clear that up now: a very small part of Acid2 dealt with error handling. The purpose *wasn't* to see how the browsers handle invalid pages, but to see how they will handle future not-yet-supported features of the standard. If some new grammar is added to the CSS standard, it will be added in such a way that older browsers following the standardized error handling algorithms will ignore the new grammar in a graceful way. If browsers don't handle unrecognized grammar correctly, it'll limit the growth potential of the CSS standard. But again, this was only a rather small part of Acid2.

      Another misconception is that passing Acid2 implies full standards compliance. FAR from it. Acid2 only tests a very small portion of the standards -- specifically some of the stuff that isn't supported well. Safari passed Acid2 ages ago, yet it still doesn't properly support background-repeat:no-repeat when the element is smaller than the background image and the image is positioned off to one side. Konqueror passes Acid2, yet it doesn't properly support outlines on elements with overflow:hidden. Firefox passes Acid2, yet I notice outline bugs on that very build. Acid2 is a nice milestone, but it isn't the end of the road.
    • akira117, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4@aaronm67
      Yea I don't care! Personal website means it's my bandwidth they use when they go to it. I say who can view it and who can't! Less spam to my email and less spam comments

      If it was say a company web site then obviously you would never do that...
    • random19, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3@Cglass
      "Haha but I know damn well you open IE to view those certain sites, at least on occasion."

      He doesn't have to if he's using Opera. 4 words: "Identify As Internet Explorer."

      Opera has that ability, and I wish FF would implement it.
    • Nanobe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I forgot to mention Opera in my previous reply, so in keeping all fair: Opera passes Acid2, yet it treats processing instructions as elements with certain selectors, and it has its share of other bugs.

      No major browser is fully compliant with either CSS 2 or CSS 2.1. Firefox and Opera are coming fairly close, though, and the massively huge CSS 3 is slowly trickling into Candidate Recommendation stage (the first stage at which browsers are supposed to try to support it). Here's to progress!
    • DirtyWorker, on 10/12/2007, -9/+5Ever heard of IE tab? https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1419/ Only works with a Windows machine though. ^^
    • sameerb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1This will increase the present 65% market share firefox has on Digg users
      http://digg.com/linux_unix/65_Digg_users_use_Firefox_3_times_that_of_Internet_explorer
  • noamsml, on 10/12/2007, -5/+118First Frontpage dies, and now this. I'm having a great morning.
    • yohan, on 10/12/2007, -69/+8You use Frontpage? o_O
    • LegendarySock, on 10/12/2007, -1/+37Ah Yohan, that joke went wayyy over your head.
    • MasteRR, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Frontpage died because they will soon be releasing a replacement. Expect new crap pages from a MS product in the future.
  • siddhartha211, on 10/12/2007, -10/+12Mad slick! It might have taken a long time, but how many pages actually draw a smiley face like that? LOL...
    • darksheer, on 10/12/2007, -5/+37The point is not that it draws the smiley face perfectly--the point is that you can expect firefox to handle almost all CSS statements exactly as they are written in the specifications.
    • cronot, on 10/12/2007, -9/+47@darksheer:

      Sorry, I'll have to be pedantic, but strictly speaking, you're wrong too. The purpose of the Acid2 test is to test how a browser handles _malformed_ CSS statements. If it handles it correctly, it should display the smile face. It doesn't test for CSS conformity, but rather error handling. Firefox already had proper CSS support as per the specs long before this build.
    • alwaysmc2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8@cronot
      Thanks for that explanation, I was just going to ask what the Acid 2 text actually did.
    • riceweb, on 10/12/2007, -7/+32Not really....

      "The Acid2 test should render correctly on any browser that follows the W3C HTML and CSS 2.0 specifications."

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2
    • cronot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20@riceweb:

      Scrolling down, on the same page:
      "Since Acid 2 also tests how web browsers deal with faulty code, it will fail W3C validation. This is expected and purposefully intended by its designers."

      The W3C also has guidelines on how browsers should deal with malformed statements, so your quote is correct as well. But keep in mind that people are supposed to write statements correctly - which Firefox should interpret and render correctly, and that's one of the reasons some people find the test not too useful. If it would test for purely correctly written CSS, then it would be more useful.
    • mabhatter, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Several posters hit it.. we need a way to prove what CSS is valid and displays correctly between browsers... Acid2 is nice because it shows that the programmers are properly handling errors in CSS...but it doesn't show DESIGNERS that a browser will handle properly vaild CSS code in a uniform manor. THAT'S what is really needed. Some way to "agree" on what features work properly. We need a suite of CSS examples that are "officially" correct (validate and proper application) and demonstrate individual features and combinations. The trouble is that the sample sites out there aren't really offical. Browser programmers don't put enough weight in working on the features because somebody's "blog" says it doesn't work. W3C should get with Opera, Firefox, Safari, Konquerer, etc and develop the test cases.. then we can get back in the browser "arms race" to start using them.... They need a project to get some media attention and some direction to implementing things. Right now it's sort of in the "closet" most people probably don't know that there ARE web standards... and that the leading browser has crappy implementation.
  • CoachZed, on 10/12/2007, -13/+1Now maybe they can work on making it color aware---I can't believe this feature hasn't been built into the OS X version yet.
  • bixing, on 10/12/2007, -38/+5Did they actually fix the CSS properly, or just modify FF so that Acid renders?

    There's a difference.

    Sorry, just have a hard time believing that CSS is actually perfected all of a sudden now.
    • darksheer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+41First, while it may appear as "all of a sudden" to you, this is very likely the culmination of a lot of work over a decent period of time. The code has likely existed for many weeks, just hasn't been merged into the official source tree.

      Second, the CSS code in firefox has been correct for a long time--only the reflow code needed correcting.
    • Cglass, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Lol bixing, did you expect Mozilla to call you and give you a step-by-step explanation of what changed. When they are writing the software, it is updated in pieces over time, but each piece is...uploaded .. all at once. Parts of this took 2 years to write. Heh I'm still struggling with what you mean, all of a sudden, did you expect they would have a countdown like Woot? You made me laugh.
  • ahill7, on 10/12/2007, -23/+12From my understanding, Opera was the only browser to properly pass the Acid2 test...until FF3 I guess.

    Is this correct?
    • barktwiggs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+36Well, Opera was the first 'windows' or 'cross-platform' browser to pass the Acid2. Konqueror ad Safari were compliant a little bit before Opera was, but they were only Mac and Linux.
    • pap3rw8, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19opera, safari, konqueror pass
      complete list of compliant browsers here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2#Compliant_browsers
    • terinjokes, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Safari and Konqueror also pass the test

      EDIT: got beat to it twice!
    • scratched, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Nope, Konqueror, iCab, and Safari, along with some sort of non-browser thingy have also been able to pass the acid test.

      And I bet there are some very unknown browsers that can do it also.

      EDIT: beaten...
    • DnasTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -9/+11"Well, Opera was the first 'windows' or 'cross-platform' browser to pass the Acid2."

      I never thought I'd see the day when running on Windows was the qualification for "cross-platform". :-)

      (Yes, I know what you meant. But I couldn't help but chuckle at that.)

      Although Konqueror actually does run on Windows through Cygwin. I'm not certain if any recent versions have been ported, but meh.
  • tensvb, on 10/12/2007, -9/+16Congratulations to Firefox for the sixth place (after Safari, Opera, Shiira, Konqueror and iCab).
    • Gofel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19After closely examining the photo finish, the judges decided to give Firefox fifth place. (Shiira uses WebKit/WebCore as a rendering engine, so I don't think it counts)
    • DnasTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18To be fair, Shiira, Konqueror, and Safari all use essentially the same rendering engine.
      (Shiira and Safari both use WebKit which is based on and returns code to Konqueror's KHTML.)

      (And to be really picky, iCab has a slight problem in that it displays a scrollbar (Wikipedia.))
  • ravenofwinter, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8Great, and exactly what does passing the test do for me, the average user?

    • Snakedal337, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21Not much really, just one step closer to making all websites look the same in every browser, and making life easier for web developers.
    • Wootery, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11"just one step closer to making all websites look the same in every browser", I'd say it's one step closer to IE rendering a page to look like one thing, and all the other browsers rendering it correctly.
      The end of hacking to make a page look right in IE is still quite a way off.
    • Cglass, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Wootery you make some strangely long off-topic posts quite well, I may need some lessons on this. What does IE have to do with the question of how THIS helps the average user...by the way, eventually most people will be using a browser other than IE.
    • Lutz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7You don't have to put out with the opera zealots telling you about how firefox fails the acid2 test :)
    • Kale, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1@ Lutz : Put out!?! I think you mean, "put up"?
    • Wootery, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@Cglass

      "Wootery you make some strangely long off-topic posts quite well", I posted in response to Snakedal337's post, specifically, "one step closer to making all websites look the same in every browser".

      Your point about my post being off-topic because I wasn't responding directly to the parent post by ravenofwinter seems, to me, invalid.
  • bwesterman, on 10/12/2007, -11/+6It makes you magically delicious.
  • psg1883, on 10/12/2007, -12/+0http://www.battledawn.com/refer.php5?ref=15
  • DiggerT, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2i don't want to wait for FF3 i want it in FF 2.1.
    • harikaried, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"I want an upgrade to my car to make it fly like a plane."

      Both the car and FF 2 don't have the infrastructure needed to make that kind of upgrade. The reflow branch that landed wasn't just a minor change that can be simply added while keeping everything else working correctly (in Firefox 2).

      Firefox 3 *Alpha 1* was released today and the official final version is planned to be released in 6 months in May.
  • flimsy, on 10/12/2007, -10/+5Firefox is becoming better.
    • stalefries, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Ha! No! You're completely wrong! This change has made Firefox drastically worse!

      /sarcasm
  • zmigliozzi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12and yet everyone still codes for IE... the non compliant..
    • jellomizer, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Well the problem no matter how crappy IE is. People use it.
      First because it is there. You get a PC IE is there ready to be clicked, Firefox needs to be downloaded and installed. While it is really no big deal some people have issues with installing programs on there computer.

      Secondly is support. If you have a problem support will not talk to you unless you are using IE.

      Third Company Intranets. With a lot of legacy application still in Active X Company Intranets require you to use IE. So having a browser for Intranet and a browser for internet is too much for them.

      People will use what they are use to. Unless like with IE 6 there is a major problems with it they will stick with it, even though it sucks.
    • alexmipego, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Well, its compliant with itself... most of the time.
    • Cglass, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1There are ways to use Active X with FireFox, and I've used FireFox in business scenarios, most companies prefer it because of its safety features.
    • noahhoward, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5A good programmer doesn't need to make a distiction. It is possible to code to support all browsers, it's just a pain in the ass that shouldn't be necessary. Every time I hit a site that excludes one browser or the other I want to grab the developers that did it and beat the hell out of them. If you can't do your job, don't take the job.
  • TroubleInMind, on 10/12/2007, -22/+4Firefox, isn't that the TV pilot that Marsellus Wallace's wife was in, in Pulp Fiction? Oh, wait. That was Fox Force Five. My bad. Guess I never heard of Firefox. Yawn.

    Just what the world needs. Another also-ran browser. No diss to the people who bust their ass working on it, but c'mon guys. Really. Call it a day. And I say this as a long-time Thunderbird zealot and undying fan.
    • nofrak1, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Call it a day? Would that be because they've already passed 10% market share or because they forced microsoft to develop a new browser to keep up, or because firefox is now the go to browser for the technologically inclined? Which one of those failures puts it over for you?
  • inkubux, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Great news :)
  • thomashallock, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8On the Mac the nose is a pixel off on the bottom left:
    http://thomashallock.com/acid_mac.png
  • thomashallock, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3No words...should have sent a poet...
  • angrycat, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13Too bad firefox almost ***** the bed when it tries to pass it, 400mb in RAM, maybe they should fix that first before they play with silly smiley faces.
    • schapel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0400 MB to display Acid2 for you? The latest Firefox 3 nightly shows just 26 MB Mem Usage and 15 MB VM Size for me. Opera 9.02 shows 25 MB Mem Usage and 22 MB VM Size.
  • tybris, on 10/12/2007, -12/+10Congrats, now switch to Opera.
  • TSSaloic, on 10/12/2007, -5/+5Finally WE ARE FULLY COMPLIANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • gandalfan, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1#@!#$!#!
  • MightyGiant, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Where can we grab this build?
  • KAMiKAZOW, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4Why do I even submit a story to Digg (http://digg.com/software/Firefox_Passes_Acid2_Test ), when another user gets credit for this? Ah well, life sucks.
    • stmiller, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Lots of people IM their friends to digg their story, so it will get lots of diggs fast. Yeah it kind of sucks.
    • DirtyWorker, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1Is that "Cry me a river" I hear in the background?
    • DrGamez, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Whaaah my story didn't get dugg.
    • Darkhacker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Yeah, I think everyone has been there before. It does kinda suck but then again Digg just links to others' content. A vast majority of the time the submitter isn't the content's creator so there isn't really much credit to be had by having your story dugg since it isn't even your content. But as someone already said, people IM their friends and they get their content up faster.
  • snowwolf, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0ugh, its passed the acid2 test in April. It was always planned they'd merge the paths together and 3.0 would be full acid 2 compliant.
  • Skeksis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Warning, I'm an Opera Troll :)

    But anyways, this is great because with so many people adopting firefox it's just one more thing that puts it another mile in front of IE. Since FF is much more widely accepted than Opera any improvements they make to FF gets a digg from me. As long as IE dies who can really complain?
  • SurlyDuff, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Hmmm...I'm still seeing a blue nose when I mouse over it using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20061208 Minefield/3.0a1 ID:2006120804 [cairo].
    • SurlyDuff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Oh wait that's supposed to happen:P...yay!
  • suicidal-kid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Take that "Firefox Myths!"
  • FHKE, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1padding: 10px;
    width: 500px !important;
    width/**/:520px;
  • jhshukla, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1Now c'mon. who hasn't heard of Photoshop?
  • WiZZLa, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1About time.
  • RojoKayako, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1So what if Firefox does pass Acid2? It still Crashes all the time, Hoggs memory (leaks), is Bloated and, I suspect, is loaded with Spyware!

    Seriously, use IE7 or Opera ===> Don't risk your computing investment using FF no matter what the Ho' Fanboys might say.
  • ma1kel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Wait....it crashes all the time? I didn't know that.. It's 32 MB, the most bloated thing ever! And of course because it's free and open-source, it's loaded with tons of spyware, and it uses 26MB RAM on my PC, it's just terrible. Just as terrible as my spelling that the build-in spell checker corrects. :((
  • AceTracer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2And only a year after Safari and Opera did!

    Even iCab has passed the Acid2 test by now, and nobody uses it.
    • bbendele, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Does this mean or have anything to do with pagezoom? Zooming in on images along with text??
  •  

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