Acid2

sirstaunch · #1 November 1st, 2005, 05:31 PM

I presume this is the right area to ask, but what is this Acid2? Something to do with page rendering or what?

symphonix · #2 November 1st, 2005, 06:33 PM

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.

BjarneDM · #3 November 1st, 2005, 06:57 PM

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/arc...4.html#a000519
http://www.webstandards.org/buzz/arc...0.html#a000583
http://www.webstandards.org/buzz/arc...0.html#a000584
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt...04.html#008042
http://www.webstandards.org/buzz/arc...6.html#a000526
http://www.webstandards.org/buzz/arc...6.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.

Lt Major Burns · #4 November 1st, 2005, 08:51 PM

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

texanpenguin · #5 November 1st, 2005, 11:28 PM

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.

sirstaunch · #6 November 2nd, 2005, 12:55 AM

Yeah little over my head but I have a fare understanding, ta

Viro · #7 November 2nd, 2005, 03:29 AM

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

Mikuro · #8 November 2nd, 2005, 05:24 AM

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.