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The acid3 test madness

27 Mar

Both WebKit (the rendering engine used in Safari) and Opera claim to have passed the acid test. Opera announced it first. WebKit claims to have released the first public build. But it seems the test itself had a bug. So technically Opera did not pass the test? WebKit won? Won what?

Does this really matter? No. I guess the test itself is flawed. Passing the test does not mean that the browser has implemented the standards completely and correctly. So the crazy race to get 100% in this test is wrong. I think the WebKit and Opera guys might be tweaking the rendering engine just to pass the test. I hope they are not but I think they are.

My only wish at the moment is that hopefully Mozilla and IE teams do not get caught in mad dash to 100 and take the time to implement the standards properly and worry about the test later. This is like the difference between studying to pass the test in class and studying to gain knowledge. Which is better?

Update: Kind of what I thought. Here is a link to a check in for WebKit specifically targeted at Acid3 test!

Related posts:

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  3. IE + Mozilla = Netscape 8 Beta?
  4. Will the in season test ban save money?
  5. Villeneuve to test for Renault

 
3 Comments

Posted in Mozilla, Software

 
 
 

  1. jmdesp

    March 28, 2008 at 2:25 AM

    That webkit check-in really is *awful* :
    m_allowFontSmoothing = (nameStr != "Ahem");

    bool newShouldUseFontSmoothing = WebCoreShouldUseFontSmoothing() && font->m_allowFontSmoothing;

    Hello Webkit guys ?
    Either
    – Ahem is broken and cannot be used with FontSmoothing, so Acid3 itself is broken to think FontSmoothing ought be used with it, or
    – your mechanism to activate FontSmoothing is broken, and you need to correct the mechanism and not to special case Ahem so that FontSmoothing works just for it

    This goes beyond tweaking the engine to pass the test, it’s cheating to pass the test. Review/Super-review in Mozilla would never let something like that go through until check-in.

     

  2. Vasanth Dharmaraj

    March 28, 2008 at 6:24 AM

    Yes. That is bad.

     

  3. marko schulz

    April 3, 2008 at 10:33 AM

    You don’t have to worry about Firefox. Mike Shaver made it clear that Acid3 doesn’t have a high priority for FF3.