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Buzz Archives: Acid2

Acid 2 Test Back to Normal

The Acid 2 test hosted here on the WaSP site was broken but is now fixed.

By Derek Featherstone | July 24th, 2008

What’s the best test for Acid3?

Now that all the major browsers (and many minor ones) have pledged support for Acid2, Ian Hickson has moved on to preparing Acid3 — and you can help!

By Kimberly Blessing | January 16th, 2008

IE8 passes Acid2 test

Blimey. Cor luvvaduck and no mistake. Just after the announcement that Opera are complaining to the European Union about Internet Explorer's dodgy standards support, Chris Wilson reports that an internal build of Internet Explorer 8 passes the Acid2 test. This doesn't necessarily mean that IE8 has fixed all its float oddities, ...

By Bruce Lawson | December 19th, 2007

Safari 3 Public Beta for Mac and Windows

As the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference kicked off today, Steve Jobs announced the availability of the Safari 3 Public Beta — for both Mac and Windows. Caution: bug reports abound.

By Kimberly Blessing | June 12th, 2007

Acid2 and Opera 9 Clarifications: Yes, Opera 9 Passes the Test

There’s been a bit of confusion over the Acid2 test and Opera 9 results. Ian Hickson has provided WaSP with the following clarifications about the Acid2 test and how things should behave. Hopefully, this insight will serve to clarify why some people are reporting issues in Opera 9 compliance.

By Molly E. Holzschlag | July 20th, 2006

Acid2 and Opera 9 Problems?

We’ve received some reports here at WaSP that Opera 9 is not passing Acid2 under certain unique scenarios. We’d like to hear from you in comments if this is the case.

By Molly E. Holzschlag | July 13th, 2006

Acid2 Supported in Opera One Year Later

Opera 9 passes Acid2, next step for Opera is mobile, and preliminary mumblings about Acid3 have begun.

By Molly E. Holzschlag | March 28th, 2006

Prince 5.1 Passes Acid2

Prince, a program that converts XML documents styled with CSS into PDF files for printing, has passed the Acid2 test. While Prince isn't a browser per se — it's a file converter — it does join Konqueror and Apple's Safari as the first CSS & HTML implementations to pass the ...

By Chris Kaminski | December 10th, 2005

We love to see you smile

Just ten days ago, Dean wrote here about Acid2: there has been no officially released browser that passes the test I'm thrilled to say that that's no longer the case — we have a winner! With today's release of Mac OS X 10.4.3, Apple's Safari RSS (version 2.0.2/416.12) is the first (publicly-released, ...

By Dori Smith | October 31st, 2005

Opera to Use acid2 Beyond the Desktop

Opera Software plans to use the acid2 test not only to improve implementation and correct bugs within the desktop browser, but then do so for its mobile browsers, too. Jon S. von Tetzchner, co-founder and CEO of Opera Software, writes: “When our rendering engine gets it right, you can expect to see ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | June 18th, 2005

iCab, Konqueror pass Acid2

In a dramatic upset, perennial Mac browser also-ran iCab has edged out Linux browsing heavyweight Konqueror for second place in the Acid2 stakes. Despite some recent controversy, Konqueror developers were able to use about half of Safari driver Dave Hyatt's Acid2 efforts to boostrap their own successful Acid2 campaign. Some great work ...

By Chris Kaminski | June 7th, 2005

Acid2 Goes on Safari

Yesterday Dave Hyatt posted news that Safari now passes the Acid2 test, making it the first browser to do so. Patches to enable Acid2 related support have been made available in Hyatt’s announce post, linked above. Under the circumstances, I thought it would be unfair to simply announce the news, so I ...

By Ben Henick | April 28th, 2005

Acid2: Putting Browser Makers on Notice

Those with long memories will remember ABBA. The rest of us may just about recall the good work of the CSS Samurai when they launched the Acid Test back in 1997 and challenged makers of browsers world-over to improve their support for CSS 1. Well, dammit, we're at it again. No, ...

By Drew McLellan | April 13th, 2005

The Acid2 Challenge

In a public effort to encourage Microsoft to add as much CSS 2 support as possible as its developers embark on IE7, Håkon Wium Lie (CTO of Opera Software and the father of CSS) and the Web Standards Project have begun the development of a test suite, known as "Acid2." The ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | March 16th, 2005

Recent Buzz

Our Work Here is Done

By Aaron Gustafson | March 1st, 2013

Thanks to the hard work of countless WaSP members and supporters (like you), Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the web as an open, accessible, and universal community is largely the reality.

When The Web Standards Project (WaSP) formed in 1998, the web was the battleground in an ever-escalating war between two browser makers—Netscape and Microsoft—who were each taking turns “advancing” HTML to the point of collapse. You see, in an effort to one-up each other, the two browsers introduced new elements and new ways of manipulating web documents; this escalated to the point where their respective 4.0 versions were largely incompatible.

Realizing that this fragmentation would inevitably drive up the cost of building websites and ran the risk of denying users access to content and services they needed, Glenn Davis, George Olsen, and Jeffrey Zeldman co-founded WaSP and rallied an amazing group of web designers and developers to help them push back. The WaSP’s primary goal was getting browser makers to support the standards set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

In 2001, with the browser wars largely over, WaSP began to shift its focus. While some members continued to work with browser vendors on improving their standards support, others began working closely with software makers like Macromedia to improve the quality of code being authored in tools such as Dreamweaver. And others began the hard slog of educating web designers and developers about the importance of using web standards, culminating in the creation of WaSP InterAct, a web curriculum framework which is now overseen by the W3C.

Thanks to the hard work of countless WaSP members and supporters (like you), Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the web as an open, accessible, and universal community is largely the reality. While there is still work to be done, the sting of the WaSP is no longer necessary. And so it is time for us to close down The Web Standards Project.

Many (if not all) of us are continuing to work in the world of web standards, but our work is now largely outside the umbrella of WaSP. If you are interested in continuing to work on web standards-related projects along with us, we humbly suggest you follow these projects:

• A List Apart – The magazine “for people who make websites” is run by WaSP founder Jeffrey Zeldman and is a consistent source of forward-thinking articles and tutorials.
• HTML5 Doctor – A solid resource and discussion forum on all things HTML5, brought to you by Bruce Lawson and his team.
• W3C Community Groups – If you have a passion for a specific web technology, you can help make it better by participating in one (or more) community groups. In particular, you might be interested in one of these: Core Mobile Web Platform, Responsive Images, Web Education, and Web Media Text Tracks.
• WebPlatform.org – A fantastic web standards resource, providing up-to-date documentation, Q&As, tutorials & more. Chris Mills, Doug Schepers, and a number of other standards advocates are involved in this project.
• Web Standards Sherpa – An educational resource founded by WaSP which continues to operate under the leadership of Chris Casciano, Virginia DeBolt, Aaron Gustafson, and Emily Lewis.
• Web Standards + Small Business – An outreach project started by WaSP that educates small businesses about why they should care about web standards. This project is overseen by Aaron Gustafson.

The job’s not over, but instead of being the work of a small activist group, it’s a job for tens of thousands of developers who care about ensuring that the web remains a free, open, interoperable, and accessible competitor to native apps and closed eco-systems. It’s your job now, and we look forward to working with you, and wish you much success.

Nota bene: In the near future, we will be making a permanent, static archive of webstandards.org and some of our other resources like WaSP Interact to preserve them as a resource and to provide a record of our 15-year mission to improve the web.
Bruce Lawson and Steph Troeth contributed to this post.

Filed in WaSP Announcement | Comments (89)

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