IE 8 Passes Acid2 Test
Didn’t see this one coming…today the IEBlog breaks the IE 8 cone of silence:
Last week, we achieved an important milestone that should interest web developers. IE8 now renders the “Acid2 Face” correctly in IE8 standards mode.
Here is how Acid2 renders today, under IE7 on Vista:
Under IE8 “in standards mode”, the face renders like this:
Standards Mode or Quirks Mode?
Here is the first line of the Acid2 Browser Test test page:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN">
That line actually puts IE7 into something called “Almost Standards Mode”, according to the Wikipedia Quirks mode article.
Watch the Video
When you visit the Acid2 Browser Test page, will IE8 be in “Almost Standards Mode”, or will it render in “Standards Mode”?
The IEBlog did not make this clear. I found myself wondering if they did this:
- Visit the Acid2 Browser Test page
- Save the source to a file
- Edit the first line of HTML to something that puts IE8 into standards mode
- Load that slightly modified file
Fortunately, the Video on Channel 9 clears this up. Fast forward to around 21:30 in the video to see that the smiley face renders correctly on the live site, not on a modified local copy.
This is really good news. Let’s hope they continue improving standards compliance in IE8 and beyond.