23 Musings

Hmm, not the most promising start for the newly released Beta of Internet Explorer 8!

The Web Standards Project never stands still it seems. Hot on the heels of Microsoft announcing that IE8 could comply with Acid2 the standards gurus are preparing the next generation browser standard compliance test.

You can read some more about Acid3 here and even try it here (it won't work on any browser yet). They're also asking for suggestions of tests to add to Acid3 so if you have any ideas go here.

This is inconsequential to anyone who isn't either a developer or a standards junkie but it's newsworthy none the less. Microsoft have announced that Internet Explorer 8 (the next incarnation of the famous browser) has succesfully passed the acid test and rendered the well known face correctly.

This is a fantastic milestone in browser development! About a year ago Firefox 3.0 Alpha passed the same test (yet to hear about the beta), Safari and Opera are already there, so things really are moving forwards nicely in the web standards arena with Microsoft joining the party.

Now, please just make it more easy to use, lighter on the processor and less memory hungry (all this goes for Firefox too) and we'll really be getting somewhere!