Take The Acid2 Challenge

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Gotta love this, being an opera user....

news.com

OperaWatch

Opera CTO to Microsoft: Take the Acid2 challenge

Hakon Wium Lie, CTO of Opera Software, has written a piece for C|net about the lack of interoperability of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) and how IE 7 will deal with this issue.

Lie proposed an acid test to ensure that IE 7 does not become another failed promise, the Web community will issue a challenge to Microsoft. "We will produce a test page, code-named Acid2, that will actively use features Web designers crave, such as fixed positioning of elements."

"Microsoft now has the chance to redeem itself with regard to Web interoperability. All it needs to do is make sure IE 7 passes the Acid2 test before shipping", wrote Lie.

The Acid2 test will be sponsored by the Web Standards Project, which is a grassroots coalition fighting for Web standards. Its integrity is unchallenged in the Web community, and its presence will ensure that Acid2 will be fair for all. It might even smoke out some bugs in other browsers.

As the test name implies, this will be the second acid test put forward for Web browsers. The original acid test, created by Todd Fahrner in 1997, was instrumental in ensuring interoperability between browsers in their CSS1 implementations. The existence of the acid test forced browser vendors to fix their implementations or face embarrassment; the test was created so that testers could easily see which browsers failed the test.

Even Microsoft made sure IE 6 passed the acid test. As a result of the acid test, CSS became usable and has changed the way Web sites are authored.

Acid2 Test

Full Article

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And now for the truly hilarious (or perhaps even sad) reply by Microsoft... I have taken the liberty of putting particular pieces of information in bold...

Microsoft feels snubbed after Opera's acid2 challenge

After Opera's CTO, Hakon Wium Lie, proposed the Acid2 challenge for Internet Explorer (IE) 7, there has been some grumbling over at Microsoft.

Microsoft's Robert Scoble, in his blog complains about the manner in which it was announced. In particular, why did the Web Standards Project (WaSP), which will be sponsoring the acid2 test, go public with the announcement first instead of approaching the people over at Microsoft? "That tells me they care more about PR than really working with browser vendors to improve things for users", writes Scoble.

Scoble also made the charge that the WaSP is the marketing department of Opera. Haavard, of Opera's Quality Assurance, writes "interestingly enough, much of Microsoft's success can be attributed to marketing, but I guess it doesn't feel good when you are on the receiving end."

The most ridiculous claim of all Scoble writes, "If all the browsers have the same underlying features, and they should only add things that are standards, what differentiation are you offering your customers and investors? Are you saying Firefox's developers can't propose anything new that'd push the Web forward? Hey, how about some linking technologies like Greasemonkey? Is Firefox not allowed to add anything like that that the W3C didn't propose and that the WaSP didn't approve of?" Haavard made some interesting comments on this, I wont repeat them here, you can read them in his journal.

Though these are Scoble's personal opinion and not that of Microsoft, it does point out the general attitude of Microsoft.

Scoble's Blog

Haavards Journal

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And there you have it.....Microsoft swearing down that W3C standards are useless (and at least one employee buckling under the pressure)