"In terms of standards compliance, Opera is the only browser that can (closely) accurately render and pass the Acid2 test set up by the Web Standards Project" Actually, Opera, Safari, Konqueror (My secondary browser on Linux) and Firefox 3 all pass Acid2.

Thanks for the update. Last time I checked they weren't, and Firefox 2 failed atrociously when I ran the test (is 3 even released?).

It's great that developers are following standards now, with the notable exception of IE which also unfortunately happens to be the market leader.

But... big surprise! The Wii browser also passes the test! 

don't take current Acid2 test results as any use. Of course, after the Acid2 test was released, some browsers went and systematically fixed those particular issues, but of course, the rest of CSS is still a mess. If you want to find the browser with the best standards support, you'll do best to look to the renders from browsers BEFORE the Acid2 test was released.

I agree. I was just correcting the Opera-only statement.

And yes, Firefox 3 has not been released, but it is scheduled for November 2007 release with alpha releases availible now. However, the nightly builds have compliance.

You're right - I used the original Acid on IE, Firefox and Opera and Opera was the closest to the target render.

Once Firefox changed to 1.5 I ran the test again, and Firefox looked much closer to the target render. 

Acid 3 will fix what you mention - and we will be able to see who really followed the specs and who just patched the browser's CSS to handle Acid2.

And of course, IE will still fail. (It did before, and it does now!)

However, in response to your actual point, may I point you to thebolded portion of your text? That is a perfect reason why people should not use a productjust because Microsoft makes it. This isn't the first bit of anti-competitive and anti-consumer behaviour Microsoft has participated in, so why should I support them?

That's why I haven't purchased a Microsoft product in a very long time, and once I find a replacement mouse and keyboard, I will no longer be using any Microsoft products. Firefox, however, I use because IE is crap. 

I remember Firefox being closest to the target render. But my memory may be gone. The difference was minimal but it looks much bigger now since there has been very lttle improvement in the rendering engine since Firefox 1.0 (That's happening in 3.0 with the upgrade to Gecko 1.9)

By the way, Safari was the first browser to fully support Acid2, and konqueror was second (but given they are both based on the same rendering engine, I'm not sure that counts. Opera was the third.

"But... big surprise! The Wii browser also passes the test!"

Yes, because it's also Opera.

"By the way, Safari was the first browser to fully support Acid2, and konqueror was second (but given they are both based on the same rendering engine, I'm not sure that counts. Opera was the third."

That's true, but did you know Safari is based on a modified Konqueror rendering engine?

"That's why I haven't purchased a Microsoft product in a very long time, and once I find a replacement mouse and keyboard, I will no longer be using any Microsoft products. Firefox, however, I use because IE is crap"

Yes, that's my philosophy - buy no Microsoft products and their market share will drop and encourage competition. I purchased Vista only for one specific game development program; I use Ubuntu+Firefox+Thunderbird+OpenOffice for multimedia, web browsing and learning C++ to replace that Vista-only program. I actually have a game that is supposed to run on Vista, but my graphics drivers screw up the 3D, so it runs better on (unsupported) Ubuntu using a compatibility layer.

Of course I do ;) Do you see Apple releasing anything they write under the LGPL unless completely forced to? Microsoft would release their software under the GPL first. But it was Safari developers who patched it to pass Acid2.

I do most of my gaming on the Wii now. I'm not touching Vista if I can avoid it. 

Touche!  Point taken.  :)