Acid2

sirstaunch

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I presume this is the right area to ask, but what is this Acid2? Something to do with page rendering or what? :confused:
 
Acid2 was the name of a hack that activated a development version of the web rendering in Safari. Its also sometimes called "Safari on Acid". This development version of the web rendering engine in Safari is disabled by default, because it is not 100% stable yet and is not yet ready to be released to end users. However, you can switch on this develpoment version of the rendering engine and there is supposedly a noticable difference in rendering speed.

I'd advise against it, though, as it will give you problems under some circumstances. Some pages may fail to appear at all, or will have mucked up colours, text or images appearing in the wrong position, and so on.
 
symphonix, that's not correct.

The recent Mac OS X 10.4.3 upgrade makes Safari officially compliant with the Acid2 test. The technote specifically says so: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301984 . For information about the Acid2 test see here:
http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/
http://www.webstandards.org/buzz/archive/2005_04.html#a000519
http://www.webstandards.org/buzz/archive/2005_10.html#a000583
http://www.webstandards.org/buzz/archive/2005_10.html#a000584
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2005_04.html#008042
http://www.webstandards.org/buzz/archive/2005_06.html#a000526
http://www.webstandards.org/buzz/archive/2005_06.html#a000527

It's true, that since April you've only been able to get Safari to pass the Acid2 test by compiling it yourself. It has never been part of any released version of Safari before now even though web developers have eagerly anticipated it.
 
i get a block of strange glitchiness that appears when i scroll past the face, that remains static on screen. it's colours are affected by contact with the face
 
You can read all about Safari development at Sufing Safari, the developers' blog:

http://webkit.opendarwin.org/blog



The acid2 test is the second test designed for web renderers to test their compliance with obscure and multiple features of the web standards. They code complex HTML which, when rendered correctly should look like a pixelated image. The developers achieved acid2 compliance in the WebKit months ago in the development builds (which you can download), the WebKit is now implemented into the stable, distributed build of Safari.
 
But the funny thing is that there are people who are reporting that Safari fails the Acid2 test on their machines, even after the update to 10.4.3
 
Yeah, I was one of those people. After a little tweaking I did get it to work, but it's VERY easy to break with "bad" settings (which I have no interest in "correcting"). For example, if you specify a minimum font size (mine is 15), it won't work. And if you use a custom style sheet (I use one for ad filtering), it's also quite likely that it won't work.

Frankly, I don't think any developers should even give this test a look. Developers should not be encouraged to create sites that only work with one font size. So many do, and it drives me crazy.

I remember when the web was a USER-centric thing. Step by step these standards are tipping the scale more towards designers, and that's really not a good thing.
 
Mikuro, the test is not going to work for everyone, but it does test the browser's implementation of the standards.

It makes perfect sense for a developer to aim to pass these tests, though it should realistically be no concern of the end-user. The site won't work for some people, even in a compliant browser, as you have said. The point is, though, that the rendering engine is now compliant to the rules. You're forcing the engine to break that page by setting your font size to a minimum, which is OK, because no site is going to use such complex code to produce images in practice. It just means that Safari definitely follows the appropriate guidelines when it comes to comments, anti-aliasing, strict compliance to nested inline elements, etc. etc., which make NORMAL sites render as expected.
 
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