
Mythbusting: Why Firefox 4 won’t score 100 on Acid3 - ssclafani
http://limi.net/articles/firefox-acid3
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zaatar
IE9 version:
[http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/benchmarks/acid3/default.h...](http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/benchmarks/acid3/default.html)

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WalterGR
It'll be interesting to compare the discussion here to previous times IE9's
stance on ACID3 has been discussed / referenced.

A couple minutes of Googling brings up:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1859375>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1196054>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1399998>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1738681>

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sambeau
Surely the correct thing to do would be to lobby to have these tests removed
from Acid3 in favour of the separate font tests.

Webkit had to request changes to the tests in in Acid2.

[http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2005_04.html#0...](http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2005_04.html#008011)

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asadotzler
That's been done. WOFF was suggested as a replacement. It didn't happen.

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simonista
Good information to know. Are there more current tests that are pushing the
current generation browsers to implement new functionality?

Also, that site is beautiful.

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bzbarsky
> Are there more current tests

There's <http://html5test.com/> (which is only so-so as a test, since last I
checked it only tests whether a feature is feature-detectable, not whether it
actually _works_ or anything, for the most part; see the "input element types"
section in Safari 5, say).

Once IE is passing Acid3 or close to it, Hixie was going to consider working
on Acid4, maybe.

Note, by the way, that most of the point of the Acid2/3 tests is not to push
new functionality as much as to push correct implementation of _old_
functionality: stuff that's been specced for a while but is buggily
implemented. This was less true of Acid3 than Acid2; last I heard the plan was
for Acid4 to be more like Acid2 in this regard.

So are you really looking for new stuff, or correctly implemented stuff? ;)

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robin_reala
Old, but here’s Ian’s initial Acid4 plans:
<http://www.hixie.ch/tests/evil/acid/004/>

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robryan
Sounds very similar to how browsers are optimizing js engines towards specific
test implementations.

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Confusion
The article does not sound like that at all. There is not even a hint of the
assertion that the browsers that do implement part of the SVG spec only did so
in order to game the acid test.

It may _remind_ you of such affairs, but people are likely to come away from
your comment with a wrong impression of the article.

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redthrowaway
> I wrote this post since there isn’t a highly ranked piece on this if you
> search for “Firefox Acid3,” and there should be. Hopefully my site’s search
> engine ranking can be useful for something.

Am I missing something? Is his site supposed to have great google mojo? I ran
the search he specified, as well as several variants, and couldn't find him in
the first 12 pages. OTOH, Wikipedia's article on Acid3 [1], which is Google's
first result, makes much the same point as he does. In fact, it cites him,
which is probably a bad thing, given it's a blog.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid3#Development_and_impact>

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limi
I just created this article a few hours ago. Google doesn't re-rank results
that often, so give it some time. ;)

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redthrowaway
Well fine then. I presume it was you who added the Wikipedia link?

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robin_reala
It was a user called Asqueela, although I suppose that could still be Limi.

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asadotzler
Asqueela is not Limi. Both are well known.

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iwwr
If it's such a technical difficulty, how does Opera manage to pass it still?

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freakwit
"Opera and Webkit implemented (very brokenly, in at least Opera’s case) a
small subset of SVG 1.1 Fonts; basically just enough to pass Acid3."

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sgift
Translation: We were unable to implement the same subset and now tell everyone
it isn't useful in the 'real world'.

Sounds better than "It was too hard for us. Sorry."

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ootachi
Has _anybody_ used SVG fonts on the Web? I'm curious.

I realize that there's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem with browsers not
supporting it, but it seems to me that the really good features start picking
up traction even when only a few browsers support it (e.g. CSS transitions and
animations, the latter of which Firefox still doesn't support).

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richbradshaw
If you wanted webfonts on iOS versions before 4, you had to use SVG fonts on
that platform. They weren't great though, and having the choice to use TTF/OTF
now is much better.

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dnautics
great article!

