The Acid Test

Just as you may see the world through a pair of glasses, you see the web through your web browser.

 

As in life, some pairs of glasses are better than others. The web browser you use, whether you realize it or not, has a profound impact on how you interact with the web.

 

It's hard to overstate just how bad the most popular web browser, Internet Explorer, really is. Yes, it's buggy, bloated, and slow. But the really crappy thing is that it doesn't follow web standards. You don't see the actual web, as it was designed to be seen, when you use IE. You see some filtered, tilted, surreal version of it. Sometimes it's just that things don't line up like they should. Sometimes it's much more.

 

Web designers hate IE, and I mean HATE it, because they have to write a given website twice, once for IE, and once, the correct way, for everything else. I imagine it's just out of arrogance that Microsoft doesn't care, or perhaps they think they ARE the web standard. If they do, they're wrong.

 

Microsoft showed up more than fashionably late to the web party (I know when I first got on the web there was no Internet Explorer. Remember Netscape?) By the time IE got there, standards were already well established and they've been steadily updated since then. Microsoft has lagged behind in support for every one of them, and in the process tried to introduce its own standards in competition with the open standards.

 

And here's the really awful part: because IE had 90% or more of web browser market share for much of its history, it has effectively put the brakes on open web development for something like ten years. Imagine what the web would be capable of today if web designers hadn't had to contend with a non-compliant rogue browser that must be catered to. That's why anger and resentment about IE are so widespread.

 

There is a program that is specifically designed to test the compliance of web browsers by throwing all kinds of difficult web standard code at them. It's called the Acid Test, it's very stringent, and IE is always dead last in compliance. IE 6 was abysmal. IE 8 scored a 20%. IE 9 did much better, 95%, which sounds impressive until you realize that anything less than 100% is a fail because it only takes one improperly handled instruction to screw everything up. Heck, a super-early buggy Alpha build of Firefox 4 scored a 97!

 

So how hard can it be to comply? It almost becomes comical at this point because Microsoft has indicated that they are afraid of updating the compliance of the browser because too many websites would be broken as they "expected the old non-compliant behavior". So the updates they have done are usually turned off by default in the browser's preference settings. Huh? That is about the most mind-numbingly stupid thing I've heard in a long while. Meanwhile...

 

Google Chrome and Apple Safari score 100%. The graphic above shows Safari's results. And they give you more than compliance, they give you blazing speed. All for free.

 

Safari is based on the open Webkit standard, to which Apple also contributes design code and assistance. Webkit is so good that when it failed a section of the Acid Test during one build, they traced it back to a bug in the Acid Test code, not the browser! Safari also uses the blazing fast Nitro JavaScript engine. Sites today are saturated with JavaScript and the speed boost you get when you use a browser like Safari or Chrome is breathtaking - orders of magnitude faster than IE. Google Chrome uses another ultrafast JavaScript engine called, appropriately, V8.

 

What are modern web standards anyhow? Too much and too boring to describe, but you may have heard of some of them: HTML5, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript, Document Object Model (DOM), ECMAScript, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), Extensible Markup Language (XML). The Acid Test also checks for things like proper display of alpha transparency in PNG files, paint order (overlapping images have to be placed in the correct order), and mouse hovering effects. These elements and more need to be handled perfectly by the web browser to pass. The end result (example above) has to be a pixel-perfect copy of the reference image supplied.

 

The thing is, most people don't even know they can use a different browser that the one their computer came with. Yes, you can! And they're all free! And just about every single one of the is faster and more compliant than IE. Plus you can rest easy knowing you're contributing to the "open web".

 

Yes, IE has gotten better. But it's still nowhere near its competition. What would I use? Chrome on Windows, Safari 5 on Mac.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball is a well-known web developer and speaker. Here's what his site says about browser standards. Read especially the second paragraph. That pretty much sums it up.

"WEB STANDARDS

Web standards are important, and Daring Fireball adheres to them. Specifically, Daring Fireball’s HTML markup should validate as either HTML 5 or XHTML 4.01 Transitional, its layout is constructed using valid CSS, and its syndicated feed is valid Atom.

If Daring Fireball looks goofy in your browser, you’re likely using a shitty browser that doesn’t support web standards. Internet Explorer, I’m looking in your direction. If you complain about this, I will laugh at you, because I do not care. If, however, you are using a modern, standards-compliant browser and have trouble viewing or reading Daring Fireball, please do let me know."