What does Acid3 mean to you and me?

So, last week two browser vendors proudly announced that their rendering engines now achieve a 100/100 score on the Acid3 Browser Test: Opera (Opera and the Acid3 Test) and Apple (WebKit achieves Acid3 100/100 in public build).

Getting a 100/100 score does not mean that the browser has completely passed the Acid3 test, since there are other criteria as well—the animation has to be smooth and the final page has to be a pixel perfect match of the reference rendering. Despite that, it’s great news to see browser vendors in a battle to implement standards first. Too bad the biggest two in terms of market share—Firefox and Internet Explorer—didn’t take part in the Acid3 race.

What I’m wondering is if, how, and when, this will help Web designers and developers like you and me. How long will it take for the other vendors to catch up enough that the standards that are tested by Acid3 can be used reliably? And what parts of the Acid3 test checks stuff that we really can’t wait to use?

What’s your thinking on this?

Posted on April 1, 2008 in Web Standards, Browsers