Acid 3: It’s not about winning, it’s about taking part

Warning This article was written over six months ago, and may contain outdated information.

It’s an exciting time to be a web developer, as all four major browsers have released / are releasing new versions with extended CSS & HTML support. However, as Opera and Webkit race to be the first to score 100% on the Acid3 test, a lot of people are getting caught up in the excitement and turning this into some kind of pissing contest.

Honestly, it doesn’t matter who passes the test first. Does it matter who passed the Acid2 test first? Do you remember? Do you care? What matters is that this year we’re going to have much better standards support and less proprietary bugs, and that’s the best and most important thing.

As with operating systems and video games consoles, everyone feels the need to take a side and defend it vigorously. But it’s not important. If you like Safari, then all power to you; I prefer Firefox. What we can agree on is that we want our websites to work equally well on both of them. I congratulate Opera and Webkit equally for working towards making better browsers, and couldn’t care less who passes the arbitrary test first.

That said, it should be judged by whichever one makes a production release, of course, not a nightly or an Alpha. You don’t win a race by having the fastest trainers, you win it by crossing the finishing line!

On a related note, today’s Wired has a good summary of HTML5 support in current and forthcoming browsers.

1 comment on
“Acid 3: It’s not about winning, it’s about taking part”

  1. bq. Do you remember?

    Good old iCab :)