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An Acid3 score of 100 percent on Windows was long thought to be a mythical creature like a unicorn or dwarf, but Opera proved otherwise.  (Source: Opera Team)
The Windows browser world has a new compatibility king

It looks like Safari's sole reign at the top of the Acid3 standings was rather short lived.  The new co-victor is Opera, maker of the Nintendo Wii and DS browsers, which has been hard at work preparing to release its PC 9.5 version of its browser, codenamed "Kestrel".  It released an alpha build in September and a beta build in October.  It plans on a final release of "Kestrel" this summer, squaring it up to take on Firefox 3.

Now "Kestrel" has some new bragging rights in its competition against Microsoft, Mozilla, and Apple's browsers.  The scrappy little company has become the first to produce a Windows browser capable of passing the Acid3 test.  On Opera's Desktop Team blog a team poster shared news from Lars Erik Bolstad, the Head of Core Technology at Opera Software, who states, "I have a quick update on where we are with Acid3.  Since the test was officially announced recently, our Core developers have been hard at work fixing bugs and adding the missing standards support.  Today we reached a 100% pass rate for the first time! There are some remaining issues yet to be fixed, but we hope to have those sorted out shortly."

Last month the best result had been set on a Mac computer using the Safari browser, which scored 90 percent.  The same day that Opera scored a passing result, Safari's nightly webkit build for Apple also achieved a 100 percent score, according to an online leaderboard with many statistics.  However, this passing result was for Mac only.  According to the list the previous leaders for Windows for in-development browsers were Firefox 3.0b4 at 68 percent, and for released browsers Safari 3.1 (525.13) at 75 percent.

The new results for Opera place it as the clear leader in compatibility among the Windows browsers.  While it has to share the overall crown with Safari, Safari is only fully compatible on Macs, lowering its userbase that get to enjoy Acid3 perfection.  For those who want to grab the record setting Opera browser, you'll have to wait about a week, while the Opera team fixes a few final bugs for the final preview version.

In his message  Bolstad states, "We will release a technical preview version on labs.opera.com within the next week or so. For now, the screenshot above shows the Acid3 test as rendered in our latest WinGogi Desktop build. WinGogi is the Windows version of our reference builds used for the internal testing of Opera's platform independent Core."

Opera use peaked in February 2004.  With the release of more stable/functional Internet Explorer versions and Firefox its support waned to its current marketshare of between 0.5-0.8 percent, according to current estimates.  However, with its new status as compatibility king of windows browsers some may care to take a second look at this alternative browser.

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All I want is one
By Chaser on 3/27/2008 10:35:35 AM , Rating: 5
Although competition is almost always a good thing I believe this "browser war" is more a personal choice statement than anything else.

Simplicity is my first priority. Just give me one browser that functions as required with as many sites as possible including my company's OWA. I care not to waste my time testing multiple browsers while I surf the net.




RE: All I want is one
By Wizard on 3/27/08, Rating: -1
RE: All I want is one
By BladeVenom on 3/27/2008 11:15:44 AM , Rating: 3
When was that, Acid Test 1 IE.vs Netscape?


RE: All I want is one
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 3/27/2008 11:32:02 AM , Rating: 5
Well, in terms of pages "working" IE is still on top. This is attributed to web designers building pages for IE based on IE standards, rather than the "Open Standards". This causes other browsers like Safari or Opera or Firefox to have to render the page "Like IE". Firefox does a pretty good job of this, but I have managed to find the occasional website that falls flat on it's face in anything but IE.

It's not "anyone's fault" and while some want to swear up and down it's all Microsoft's fault, they fail to account for the fact that Back when IE was gaining widespread adoption, none of the standards nor their respective organizations existed. They came later after Microsoft and IE were well entrenched.


RE: All I want is one
By xsilver on 3/27/2008 12:02:25 PM , Rating: 2
the one thing with html coding that irks me is how a lot of people are using various resolutions now to display their web pages. However coders still have to cater to the lowest common denominator so examples such as this DT page has about half the page covered by 2 gray bars down the side.

Is there no provision to adjust the page according to the resolution of the browser? This problem is going to only get worse as we move towards higher and higher resolutions?


RE: All I want is one
By wien on 3/27/2008 12:23:25 PM , Rating: 5
Of course you can make dynamically sized pages. Easily even. Most people just don't take advantage of it. The grey bars on this page is a decision 100% in the hands of the developer responsible for the HTML/CSS.

Personally I like pages that cap the text's line length at sensible amounts though. Lines that cross the entire screen can get tiresome to read.


RE: All I want is one
By cochy on 3/27/2008 12:55:23 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Lines that cross the entire screen can get tiresome to read.


That's very true. I never thought about that. Why is it that we have shorter attention span for longer lines even if the word count ends up being the same?


RE: All I want is one
By MrBungle on 3/27/2008 1:24:26 PM , Rating: 4
It's not so much about attention span, but more about how your eyes work:

http://webstyleguide.com/type/lines.html

Think of a newspaper page - it's normally divided into 4 or 5 columns of text. If you had to read a news story all the way across the page, it would be difficult (at least without very large gaps between each line) to keep track of the line that you're on, and where you're at on that line. It's easy to lose where you're at.

As a web designer, I used to be bothered by the constraints of having to design for an 800x600 browser window. I'd still prefer to at least have 1024x768 as the lowest common denominator, but that limited width forces you to make some critical layout decisions that I think ultimately improve your designs, at least for the most part. Also, I think many people with higher-resolution monitors prefer to have several windows open at once - i.e. not maximized - so the smaller width may also be appropriate for their needs, as well.


RE: All I want is one
By xsilver on 3/27/2008 9:12:00 PM , Rating: 3
it would be great if the browser could realize that you've got spare resolution lengthwise and therefore could arrange the page in a newspaper like column format automatically.

I have no idea how its going to work, but one can dream...

well all i can do now is have two windows open at once.


RE: All I want is one
By wien on 3/28/2008 7:35:40 AM , Rating: 3
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-multicol/

Don't expect to see it in use for another 7 or 8 years though.


RE: All I want is one
By ChronoReverse on 3/27/2008 1:50:22 PM , Rating: 2
Indeed. This is one of the reasons why I dislike widescreen monitors so much.


RE: All I want is one
By wolrah on 3/27/2008 7:53:45 PM , Rating: 2
You know, since Windows 2.0 we have had the ability to control the size of our program windows. You don't have to keep your browser maximized. You could even have *gasp* two programs on the screen at once!

Even better, any good widescreen will have a rotating stand so you can flip it to "tallscreen" mode which is great for reading forums and news sites.

Seriously, there hasn't been a reason to maximize most apps (Photoshop and similar MDI apps where there are a lot of contained tool windows being the exception) since 1024x768 or so. Past there, it really doesn't make sense to have one enormous window.


RE: All I want is one
By robinthakur on 3/27/2008 12:34:19 PM , Rating: 5
Yer its called absolute versus relative positioning! Its a very deep, head-hurting subject but one which is useful to know. Its always a tradeoff, and the slightly unpredicatable nature of how items will resize plus IE's not supporting a 'min' CSS value until recently meant it wasn't really used and is still a bit on the edge for most people!

This situation *is* Microsoft's fault mainly, in answer to the previous poster, there's unfortunately no getting away from it. They abused their position to ignore the standards set down in plain english by the W3C for roughly ooh, 5 years, instead favouring their own proprietary little behaviours in the browser which nobody used and neglecting such obvious faults like umm...the broken box model and now we're in a situation where the majority of people in the world use a browser which is majorly broken in the way it displays stuff. We're not talking small things here either. You really need to design a site for IE 7 yourself, then try it out in IE6 to see just how much is utterly cocked up and the pain which is involved in fixing it. (This is without hacks etc.) Remember alot of people are still using IE6 and either don't want to upgrade or cannot. The box model fault alone turns designing exact dimensions of pages into a trial and error exercise which takes maybe 5 times as long to carry out.

Most people here look at the Acid test from the perspective of people browsing the net, not as developers and see little difference between them apart from rendering time and crap like phishing filters etc. What is far more important to all of us is that they *all render the pages to look identical* to a standard and then differentiate themselves through whatever features they want. What with the publicity surrounding the acid test and the embarassment that Opera and Safari can render the test correctly, yet IE can't, hopefully MS will make an effort with this release to keep standards compliance. Its not unreasonable given how quickly Opera can put together a build which passes the test yet MS with all its billions of dollars and hundereds of thousands of talented individual employees cannot.


RE: All I want is one
By lantzn on 3/27/2008 5:08:24 PM , Rating: 2
robinthakur is absolutely correct. MS promised us a web standard compliant browser with the release of IE7. Unfortunately in many ways this has not even been met. IE6 was such a hindrance to the advancement in web development. I can't wait for the day when that browser is dust.


RE: All I want is one
By robinthakur on 3/27/2008 1:20:18 PM , Rating: 3
It depends when you would say it was "gaining widespread adoption" The W3C was setup in 1994. There are several standards in HTML which aren't even respected by IE6 (2002 release as I recall) and I think we would both agree that HTML was a stable standard long before IE was a twinkle in Billie's eye. It might all be ok if it wasn't so obviously broken from how its meant to work on paper or in logic (regardless of standards)

In an ideal world, people would avoid a broken product, but sadly if its part of the standard OS on the PC which they buy 99% won't change it. Why didn't MS fix it or add standard features like transparent PNG in the 5 years it took to get IE7 out the door?? Still its better than having to BUY Netscape like in the olden days!!

While I personally do blame MS for producing a browser which renders things incorrectly (there is no getting away from this fact, you need to put in workarounds to get it to display as one would expect) Its also the fault of developers for pandering to IE more and modifying their layouts to cater for its broken system. After all, what would you do if a browser you were trying out didn't render a page properly? As most have done with Opera for "not rendering pages correctly" (ho ho) they change browser!

In hindsight its easy to say this, but still leaves us in a predicament where the entire progress of presentation on the internet is stuck at a IE6 level without being able to meaningfully change... until everybody stops using IE6. Btw I use IE7 and Firefox :D


RE: All I want is one
By wien on 3/27/2008 2:36:47 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Its also the fault of developers for pandering to IE more and modifying their layouts to cater for its broken system. After all, what would you do if a browser you were trying out didn't render a page properly?
While I'm fine with talking some of the blame, realistically, what are my options? Those of my customers who actually use IE are usually completely incapable of understanding that a browser can have bugs preventing their brand new site from working. It's just way over their heads. If the site looks wrong in IE, it's my fault and I need to fix it.

I could of course sit down with every one of them and explain the problem in detail, but what about their customers visiting the page? They won't know what's up either.

It's just a fscked up situation all around. The only remedy really is for IE to die, die, die, or for Microsoft to adopt Gecko or Webkit. What value does Trident provide these days anyway? It's just a huge buggy mess they have to keep pouring man-years into to catch the other engines. The only thing I can think of that may the preventing them is the Not Invented Here Syndrome, and that's just not a valid excuse, even for Microsoft.


RE: All I want is one
By winterspan on 3/27/2008 7:27:08 PM , Rating: 2
Not anyone's fault??? Are you joking? Of course it's someone's fault. It's the fault of the moronic web developers who created a non-standards compliant website and just focused on compatibility with IE's bugs and faults. How can you *NOT* blame the developers? I've been involved in web development and E-commerce on various levels for years, and today, THERE IS NO EXCUSE for an IE-only website. That's just pure laziness and incompetence and makes all of us look bad.