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Safaris passes Acid 2 compatibility test before IE, Firefox and Opera

vnunet.com — The update to OS X 10.4.3 makes Safari the first major browser to pass the Acid2 test. The test verifies a browser's compliance to a series of internet standards. Neither Internet Explorer, Firefox or Opera currently pass the test from the Web Standards Project.

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  • rmal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I finally get to see the complete smiley face!
  • Zlobadon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I digg that someone is actually attempting to meet the standards. Now if Safari could just pass the Linux and Windows compatibility tests I'd be willing to try it.
  • Software2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0"Now if Safari could just pass the Linux and Windows compatibility tests I'd be willing to try it."

    ZING!
  • Discosis, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Safari passed Acid2 months ago in CVS ... why is this front page news?

    (I look forward to no longer having to butcher my pages for Safari)
  • MikeZila, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Oh snap. rmal, that was good.

    Sad thing is, Safari was the first thing I replaced when I got my new Mac. FireFox was the first piece of software I installed, aside from some updates and my games. I couldn't wait to play UT2k4 on a Dual2.7Ghz PPC with a bitchin' GeForce.

    But yeah, good for the %1 of the internet that uses Safari.
  • Linuxrocks, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0Too bad only Macs can use safari..Which means about .5% of internet users have safari...
  • AdamWillis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1What does this Acid test actually comprise of? Who regulates it and sets standards? Also, if this test is legit then why doesn't the Acid test makers, just make there own browser that can pwn on the others?
  • FiveIron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2huh, safari passed the acid 2 test long time ago, I could have sworn it, so I googled, and there are many pages, including a slashdot that say it passed, most dating around april 28th
  • Dennis, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I'm not a fan of Safari either and Firefox was also the first app I installed. Funny.
  • elfguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Acid test is so overrated. What counts is if it has the features you want, if not is it customizable, and do all sites you visit display in a functional matter. For me firefox wins.
  • jicon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0Not all sites I visit, work on Safari. Camino or Firefox to the rescue.

    Overall, IE6/7 still works better than most browsers for me.
  • kolja, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yes safari passed the actual test back in April for the first time - inside a lab. It's only now being made available to end users.
  • manfesto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7@AdamWillis http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/guide.html

    That's what the Acid test is - basically the ultimate "acid" test of standards support set forth by the Web Standards Project. Web standards have been around as long as/longer than all modern browsers, yet nobody has cared to meet them to a "T" - this is what the Web Standards people are asking for. Their goal isn't to "pwn on the others," it's to standardize web development (both yesterday's HTML and today/tomorrow's CSS and DHTML)so everybody can use it and develop for it without issue.
  • frem001, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I don't know why but i've never been a big fan of firefox, but i think it's cool the way it's taking on IE. I prefer safari, it has some cool features and the reset button is cool if you're on a public computer, so you don't have to worry about someone trying to backtrack and access email or the porn sites you might visit (at home obviously!)
  • pcgeek101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yay for Safari ... I don't use Mac, but I'm glad that they're taking the effort to make a standards compliant browser! :)
  • antix, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0Okay, but what is "Safaris"?
  • manfesto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@elfguy and jicon - that's the point/problem. The reason IE works with almost all sites is because, due to its large database, people have gotten used to coding web pages for it. IE is not very standards compliant, so people have had to code around its quirks rather than code to the web standards. To a lesser degree, this is true of Firefox as well - it has its own quirks (some of the more complicated CSS, mostly) that people are starting to code around rather than code to the standard. In a way, some pages that render badly in Safari (or Konqueror - the only other "major" browser that's passed the Acid2 test) is due to the fact is IS standards compliant. People aren't coding to standards because the major browsers don't require them to, and that is a problem. Unless this changes, we might start seeing "best viewed with..." again in web pages, just like back in the 90s when this phrase played no small part in the death of Netscape.
  • MellerTime, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1AdamWillis: "Also, if this test is legit then why doesn't the Acid test makers, just make there own browser that can pwn on the others?"

    Because they're in R&D... They set the standards that would make live uber and wonderful, full of hot dancing faries that sprinkle you with magical weed dust and screw you all night long. It's up to someone else to develop and market those faries, I mean standards...
  • ThinkBox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@ Mikezila - yeah UT2k4 is bitchen on my Ultra DDL Dual 2.7

    But now SO IS SAFARI - on yee of little faith!
  • mike_p, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I agree with pcgeek....

    I don't use a Mac and I probably STILL wouldn't use Safari if I owned one (a mac). It's just good to see SOMEONE setting the trend for browsers that REALLY need to strive to be standards-compliant (IE is failing miserably). PNGs = no big deal (IE sucks at this as well), CSS = big deal (Firefox is ok, IE BLOWS, Safari is good)...

    Firefox just wins because of the cool extensions support and tabbed browsing (over IE on Windows anyway)
  • neocitron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0good news for Safari.. i use safari because Firefox on the mac really is sluggish..
  • zweben, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I am pretty happy about this. While most people don't have much reason to care, to web designers this is really nice. It is just another step Apple has taken to make sure that you can code to spec and have it display properly. Firefox is pretty good with this, but IE sucks in this area as it does so many others.

    In fact, i'd be a lot happier if Safari were at the same place and IE passed Acid 2 now because Safari was a hell of a lot closer than IE is. I mean, IE doesn't even support max-width tags in CSS. It's sad.
  • pcgeek101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Firefox just wins because of the cool extensions support and tabbed browsing (over IE on Windows anyway)"
    And not just that, but it wins because of the way it is marketed. It's marketed by the community, everyone. People have links to their blogs, or in their e-mail signatures that is constantly promoting Firefox ... why? Because the average Windows user out there will benefit not only from the security of the browser, but will benefit from its vast array of features and simply its quality.
  • jakedahn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0neocitron: yeah i agree firefox can be sluggish, so i used safari up until now. I use Flock :D http://flock.com still a bit slugish but it is so damn cool
  • SuperFarStucker, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Opera 9.01 PR almost passes the acid2 test and while I can't compare it to safari I must say it is far superior to both Internet Explorer and Firefox. Firefox is probably the worst browser IMO and the only reason it has any support at all is because it is the best browser for Linux. On windows, FF vs. Opera is a joke. I'd rather use IE with a wrapper to support tabs than FF. FF = ***** support for gestures, crappy navigation tools, ugly page rendering (skins don't skin modal buttons like they do in opera, and it fails as miserably as IE does on acid2 test).

    To top it all of, it's ***** clunky. Web pages load slow because it waits until all the elements are loaded before it renders, and if you disable it many pages come out looking like ***** and a half, forcing a refresh. I don't know where the developers get the idea that everyone wants to go around and round up the latest plug-ins every ***** update either.

    Opera doesn't do that and provides almost all the worthwhile functionality firefox does with the same binary package size. Only OO advocates to stubborn to admit a closed source package works better than an open source one like FF (or those who have been indoctrinated by said evangelists).

    I've never used safari but I think it is nice that it is standards compliant.
  • beejay54, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Are you kidding? In this day and age if your a serious web developer/designer Safari/Firefox is what you test with first.
  • jshabad00, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Now if Safari could just pass the Linux and Windows compatibility tests I'd be willing to try it."

    "Too bad only Macs can use safari..Which means about .5% of internet users have safari..."

    Are you guys serious? You've never heard of Konqueror??? Oh, wait.... even digg.com hasn't heard of "Conqueror" (from the spell check).
  • shakin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Safari passed Acid2 months ago in CVS ... why is this front page news?

    (I look forward to no longer having to butcher my pages for Safari)"

    CVS is useless other than to see where the browser will be later on. This also won't help Safari's compatibility on many sites. I've been using acid-compliant Konqueror for a while and and it, like Safari, still needs improved Javascript support. Do they support XMLHTTPRequest at all?
  • NoOneButMe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Firefox just wins because of the cool extensions support and tabbed browsing"
    Erm.. Safari has tabbed browsing, and 90% of the extentions on FF are pointless, and of the 10%, there's maybe .. 9% that are built into firefox, with the end result being that the biometrics and bible extentions dont have a safari port.
  • theone3, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0http://www.eaplay.com/australia/promotions/mostwanted/?entry_id=33806
  • chriis, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0whoops! sorry. don't click that. I was trying to post to another story.
  • jermm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0using safari now
  • calaban9, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Now if only safari was a little stabler... I still have pages that cause the scroll bars in a div to stop working.
  • pcgeek101, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Wow, why are people bashing Firefox? If you're gonna talk ***** browsers, bring IE on into the ring ... there's no argument for using IE, at all, for general web browsing.
  • KZeni, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1IE is the worst... i find that Safari is the most capable browser for rendering, but it isn't the most stable. Firefox beta is close to it. I use safari though. Good stuff.
  • OswaldKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Opera loads slower than Firefox on my machine.
  • dmron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0"Safaris"? Jesus H Christ we need the ability to edit stories.
  • stealthboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I use Firefox on my Linux machines and my work Windoze box, but on my Macs is Safari all the way. It's so much faster than Firefox on OS X (load time especially). And the look and feel just blends perfectly, of course. I don't like any of the Firefox themes because none match the beauty of OS X.

    So there.
  • simX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Has anyone noticed that the new Safari doesn't actually seem to pass the Acid2 test? The diamond nose in Safari's rendering is 1 pixel shorter on the bottom two sides than it is in the reference rendering. I think there's still one small fix left before Safari actually passes the Acid2 test.
  • Obsession88, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4IE is like crabs. Just because 20million people have it doens't mean I'm going to run and jump in line.
    I have used Safari since day one and it has worked 99.95% of the time. If you like Firefox use it. If you like Safari use it. If you like IE stop eating paint chips.
  • BlueStarr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Firefox is too windoish. I need my Apple GUI goodness. That and Safari wipes the floor with firefox in over all polish and function.

    http://www.apple.com/macosx/quicktours/safari.html
  • tapo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Safari on the Mac is a damn fine browser, and for most people, it's better then Firefox. I'm so glad that the situation of web browsing on the Mac is so much better then that of Windows.

    For those who haven't used Safari:

    1. It's open source, using a framework available to other OS X applications called Webkit. The HTML parser for webkit, webcore, is based off of KHTML, used in KDE's Konqueror. This change for Acid2 compliance affects Konq as well.

    2. It has most of the features people need. Pop-up blocking, RSS reader, clean interface, and tabbed browsing.

    3. This leaves most Mac users with few reasons to download and install Firefox. Personally, I use Firefox because I love mouse gestures (an extension) and quick searches. Most people who want it simply to use Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine don't go with Mozilla at all, but rival Camino. Camino is much faster and cleaner considering it uses native widgets.
  • terafunker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Nice one, Obsession88!

    Safari is a wonderful browser. Just another benefit of Mac ownership.
  • BT-Wang, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2for chist's sake, I wish people would give credit where it is due and not on the edges they happen to be near.

    the khtml rendering engine used in safari and konqueror now passes the acid2 test.
  • TimmyGUNZ, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I love Safari. If only they had a Google Toolbar I'd use it all the time. Firefox sucks on Mac. Freezes so often on me, and is very slow when compared to Safari.

    I'd love to see Apple make Safari a Windows app as well (like with iTunes), and open it up for add-ons.
  • alpharuin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The one thing that keeps me from using Safari fulltime is the lack of single-window mode. Sure there's an option for opening new tabs for external application links, but links in Safari open new windows instead of tabs unless you CMD+click, I find this annoying. Other than that, its a pretty slick browser.
  • BlueStarr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"the khtml rendering engine used in safari and konqueror now passes the acid2 test."

    Excuse me, but it was the Safari team that made this possible and was the first. The Konqueror group incorporated the modifications after Apple released it.

    So that's Apple first everyone second.
  • Shire, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Good to see Safari following the standards. I personally like Safari but have Camino installed as a backup. Thank goodness Tiger doesn't come bundled with IE:Mac, truly a disgusting program.
  • fighto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0very impressive...but, for windows opera 9 is closest.
  • zwilliams, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I personally prefer Safari RSS over Firefox. Don't get me wrong, Firefox is great... but Safari is extremely fast. It'll bounce once in my dock and its done starting up. It renders faster than Firefox, and its complaint.

    Not much of a fan of the brushed metal look, but I fixed that with a few tweaks.
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