Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Acid2 is a year old now, and recent beta builds of Opera 9 now support the test. Håkon Wium Lie, CTO of Opera Software and one of the contributing authors to the Acid2 test, says:

“Some people thought Acid2 would be easy for Opera since we were involved in shaping the test. Not so. Acid2 rightfully exposed many bugs in Opera and we have squashed them, one by one.”

The next challenge for Opera? “Getting that smiley face on phones” Lie says.

There’s also mumblings regarding an Acid3 test or suite, this would be authored by a collaborative group including representatives from major browser and software developers.

Your Replies

#1 On March 28th, 2006 4:52 pm molly.com » Acid2 Supported in Opera One Year Later replied:

[...] Read more and comment away (oh it feels so good to say that) at WaSP. [...]

#2 On March 28th, 2006 5:06 pm Jon Tan replied:

Congratulations to the Operati. The next challenge… or rather top of my wishlist is Opera as the default browser in most mobile devices not just an optional download. Ah, I wish.

#3 On March 28th, 2006 9:29 pm Dustin Diaz replied:

Indeed, it would be cool if Opera came standard on all new phones. Congrats Opera!

#4 On March 28th, 2006 11:43 pm Abdelrahman Osama replied:

I always respected Opera especially after it became ad-free, but one thing I dislike about it is the zoom option I consider it a new “break the standards to be unique” scenario, I think it might be an option but not the default text resizing option.
I hope it’s fixed in later versions.

#5 On March 29th, 2006 2:26 am Pig Pen - Web Standards Compliant Web Design Blog » Blog Archive » Acid 2 And Opera replied:

[...] Acid 2 And Opera from the WaSP [...]

#6 On March 29th, 2006 2:41 am Rob Wilmshurst replied:

It’s a fantastic step forward; well done that browser!
I’ve been running opera on my phone for a while now and it’s served me very well indeed. It’d be fantastic if we could get phones smiling like that.

Abdelrahman, I rather like the zoom functionality. :)
It’s about time that images (especially those containing important text) were resizeable.
It looks like page zooming is here to stay – I believe IE7 is using it too now (correct me if I’m wrong here…).

#7 On March 29th, 2006 3:31 am Stuart Colville replied:

Great news and proof if any further was needed that ACID 2 is a useful benchmark. Let’s hope that more browser manufacturers will follow suit.

#8 On March 29th, 2006 7:35 am Geekipollas » Opera 9 pasa el Acid2 Test replied:

[...] Hoy he tenido la grata sorpresa de leer en The Web Standards Project que la nueva versión (aún no la definitiva) de Opera 9 ya pasa el Acid 2 Test. Por supuesto, no he podido esperar. Podéis descargaros la última versión desde la página de Opera Desktop Team (para Windows, MAC y UNIX). [...]

#9 On March 29th, 2006 9:17 am Megan replied:

…rather top of my wishlist is Opera as the default browser in most mobile devices not just an optional download. Ah, I wish.

He, lets not stop there, Opera on all PC’s!!! Ha, that’s a little far fetched :) It would be wonderful if more people would start using it at least.

Great for Opera to be so enthusiastic about standards :)

#10 On March 29th, 2006 9:30 am Ara Pehlivanian replied:

A year late, but ages ahead of the competition… way to go Opera!!! w00t!

#11 On March 29th, 2006 11:21 am Jakub81 replied:

> I always respected Opera especially after it became ad-free, but one thing
> I dislike about it is the zoom option I consider it a new “break the standards to
> be unique” scenario, I think it might be an option but not the default text
> resizing option.
> I hope it’s fixed in later versions.

Which standard exactly does it break?

#12 On March 29th, 2006 12:47 pm at last replied:

You’re a bit late. Ben promissed to put that up once the new site design was done. That’s … what? Weeks ago.
Then I thought it would be because it is not even beta software. Oh well, and now …

But I agree, it should be the standard for mobile phones and devices, imho. Nothing can beat it there any, everyone agrees. I even got die-hard FF evangelists to say it’s really beautifully looking on their mobile phones.

I was very happy once that weekly got out and I could see the smile with that blue nose :)

Looking forward to the final release of Merlin. Cheers.

#13 On March 29th, 2006 5:12 pm Christian Montoya replied:

My prediction: Mozilla will pass Acid2 in 2007 and IE will pass Acid2 in 2020. :)

#14 On March 29th, 2006 8:07 pm Julian Bennett Holmes replied:

Yup, looks great.
Opera 9 is also a Universal Binary for Mac, and it finally renders my site OK, much better than Opera 8.5, in which my site pretty much is totally broken, even though the site is XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS validated, etc.

#15 On March 30th, 2006 4:50 am iim.vxk replied:

in some_months, méxico really take much_fans of Opera!!

remember this, iim.vxk.

#16 On March 30th, 2006 5:48 pm Acid2 Supported in Opera One Year Later · Style Grind replied:

[...] From WaSP: Acid2 is a year old now, and recent beta builds of Opera 9 now support the test. Håkon Wium Lie, CTO of Opera Software and one of the contributing authors to the Acid2 test, says: “Some people thought Acid2 would be easy for Opera since we were involved in shaping the test. Not so. Acid2 rightfully exposed many bugs in Opera and we have squashed them, one by one.” [...]

#17 On March 30th, 2006 11:09 pm Manoj replied:

I tried with latest development build Opera 9.0 Build# 8326, but it failed Acid2 test. Which build passed the test?

#18 On March 31st, 2006 10:20 am Ra-Mon replied:

Windows build 8265 or Macintosh Build 3264 or UNIX Build 145 on Friday, 10. March 2006 passed Acid2 test.
FULLY passed Acid2 test, i.e. without scrollbal on viewport ;-)

http://snapshot.opera.com/windows/o90w_8265.exe
http://snapshot.opera.com/mac/o90w_3264.dmg
http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/Weekly-145/

Actual build, 8326 for Win32 on Wednesday, 29. March 2006 also pass the test.
http://snapshot.opera.com/windows/o90w_8326.exe
http://snapshot.opera.com/mac/o90w_3303.dmg
http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/Weekly-197/

more info at http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/

#19 On April 1st, 2006 10:15 pm Manoj replied:

Thanks Ra-Mon, it’s great to see the smiling face. Thanks Opera team, good work. Who will pass the Acid2 test next, Firefox?

#20 On April 5th, 2006 9:42 am Dgital lRaven replied:

Thanks for the news Molly! I’m actaully a big fan of Opera and seemed to miss this info. Thank you also to Ra-Mon because I had noticed my build of Opera 9 failed Acid2, now I know I should update my version.

I am full favor of Acid3! There needs to be a public benchmark that all browser makers can aspire to. Now that some browsers are reaching Acid2, Acid3 needs to be developed for the next versions of those browsers. Having a public benchmark will allow alternative browser makers to understand what they need to be competitive.

#21 On April 10th, 2006 12:45 pm Chris replied:

But it´s still not 100%. The smiley shows a red part on the right side.
The original is black!

#22 On April 13th, 2006 1:28 am nick replied:

Opera 9 did it at last… before when i test my opera 8 it almost showed that smiley face unlike firefox (1.5) that had shown a face that looks like beaten up in a gang war. opera is the best i wish firefox fanboys would have some time to test other browsers they are not “open-minded” (even though firefox is “open-source”)

#23 On April 13th, 2006 8:06 pm paul replied:

I use opera since it was ad-free and i am glad that opera passes acid2 and it is the first browser on windows os thas passes the test (i presume, correct me if i’m wrong). Even though they pass the Acid2 test i’m still worried about the pages that would not open correctly on opera like friendster and yahoo! mai because i use them frequently and some menu icons are not shown, but those pages work fine on FF..

thnx

#24 On May 30th, 2006 8:02 am azam replied:

there is greate difference when i run ACID2 in IE and Opra and IE is failed badly.
but one thing i found is IE has displayed the images nicely but the Opra failed or the image displayed in opra were not as good as the IE.
That may be case due to ZOOM option in Opra.
If u can eamil any comments that will be very nice.
Anoter i thin i want aks is that can we say ACID2 a open standard for browsers.

#25 On June 20th, 2006 3:07 pm BugMaster replied:

The Opera 9 Final now available (build 8501). But even with it the ACID2 test looks ugly when using “Page Zoom = 100%” and checked “Fit to width”. Is it normal? Why this option break the standard?

#26 On June 21st, 2006 2:46 am WaSP Member chrisk replied:

@Bugmaster: according to Opera’s help pages, ‘fit to width’ is an option to reformat web pages to fit the available screen size — on a mobile phone, for example.

I can’t say why Opera reformats the Acid2 page when there is already enough width to display the page as-is. But I’m also not sure it’s fair to expect the test to render properly when you’ve selected an option that explicitly tells the browser to reformat the page. That seems kinda like selecting 16:9 aspect ratio on your TV and then wondering why a 3:4 TV show looks ‘squished’.

#27 On June 21st, 2006 8:01 pm dziubek replied:

http://www.sie.vectranet.pl/~romek/zrzuty/opera-acid2.png

#28 On June 23rd, 2006 9:40 am :D replied:

… I just downloaded the newest version of Opera, but the smiley is red behind the eyes…! At least it’s the right shape. Zooming to 150 then to 50 then to 150 and back to 100 breaks the smiley into little fragments.

Also Opera 9 seems to render pages a lot faster than v8.54, but for some reason it hangs for 2 seconds every minute or so.. there, typed a few letters in this box and no response, then the letters suddenly all appeared..

#29 On June 27th, 2006 1:02 am Jessica replied:

If I could get opera on my phone that would be great! It may be worth making a premium feature – cell operators could advertise it in commercials and make it another bonus reason for getting a new phone…

#30 On July 3rd, 2006 5:35 pm chaals replied:

Hey, we have an internal phone uild that passes Acid2… but afraid you’ll have to wait a little to get that on your own phone.

Sadly, the Acid2 test itself relies on things like people having a small minimum font size set or who have any kind of text zooming. So it would have been bad luck to people like me who often use both of those, but luckily I can set a site-specific preference in Opera 9 just so tha Acid2 test renders…

Hopefully Acid3 will be better designed to take account of various basic accessibility features – and maybe we could even hope designers follow it into using standards to make the web work better for everyone.

#31 On July 3rd, 2006 5:40 pm chaals replied:

Err, an “uild” (in the last comment) is like a build but we have to do some more work on it before releasing it ;)

You can see a screenshot of Acid2 on mobile though, thanks to our leaky developers. (Just kidding. Mediumgeek is a model of integrity, as well as a great developer).

#32 On July 3rd, 2006 5:42 pm chaals replied:

Err, an “uild” (in the last comment) is like a build but we have to do some more work on it before releasing it ;) And I meant to say that it doesn’t work with zooming or moving anything else in any way…

You can see a screenshot of Acid2 on mobile though, thanks to our leaky developers. (Just kidding. Mediumgeek is a model of integrity, as well as a great developer).

#33 On August 1st, 2006 10:00 am The Opera Browser Operetta, alpha 1 at phocks replied:

[...] Yes, I am well aware that this is quite a lame and silly idea. I normally wouldn’t post something like this, but the other day I was out this guy was going on about how good Opera was and how it was the only browser that passed the acid2 test, which surprise, surprise, was developed in conjunction with Opera Software. And frankly I just didn’t like the guy; found him very conceited. [...]

#34 On October 3rd, 2006 12:50 am darin replied:

i just test acid2 (http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html)using mozilla firefox, and I see hello world..
It seem that acid2 also work in mozilla

#35 On December 20th, 2006 1:38 am Webkrauts » Webentwicklung auf Safari replied:

[...] Spulen wir vor ins Jahr 2005. Der Safari 2.0.2 ist der erste Browser, der den harten Acid2-Test des Web Standards Project besteht. Kurz darauf folgen iCab (ein Mac-Browser des deutschen Entwicklers Alexander Clauss), Konqueror (ein ebenfalls auf KHTML basierender Linux-Browser) und später auch Opera in der Version 9. Damit war der dringend nötige Beweis erbracht: Webstandards funktionieren. [...]

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