IE8 Passes Acid2 Test
The IE team at Microsoft are beavering away at the next version of Internet Explorer – version 8. For many years the IE team have been criticised by the wider web community for not producing standards compliant browsers. Chris Wilson the IE platform architect at Microsoft spoke at the Web Directions South Conference in September 2007. I have a great deal of respect for this guy. He stood up at a standardistas conference packed to the rafters with people who regularly use “Microsoft” and “Evil” in the same sentence and stated the case for IE and standards.
He talked about the challenges of supporting standards without breaking the web and ensuring that we maintain backwards and forwards compatibility in the real world. He also said that the next version of IE there would be a huge investment in standards compliance and we’re now seeing early evidence of this with the news that IE8 has passed the Acid2 test. Acid2 is a test page, written to help browser vendors ensure proper support for Web and related standards in their products and displays the “Hello World” smiley (pictured above) on successful implementation. Bruce Lawson, Accessibility Task Force Member at the Web Standards Project had this to say…
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.
For more information, check out the IE blog and watch the Channel9 vid
