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The Acid Test

Posted 25-Dec-2007 by Robby Slaughter (@robbyslaughter)

Last week, a group of programmers deep inside Microsoft announced that the next version of their software behaved in a particular way under some unlikely circumstances and shocked the world of web development. The company whose browser has long been the bane of designers everywhere suddenly conformed to standards. Internet Explorer 8 passed the Acid2 Test.

The Source of Standards

It might seem like official requirements for computer software would be drafted and enforced by some remote wing of the Department of Weights and Measures. Actually, there is a collection of squabbling non-profits with no authority whatsoever. These groups write recommendations (not standards) which software companies balance against corporate realities. The end result, web browsers like Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer, differ just enough to be both moderately compatible and maddeningly unique. Web developers hate this.

A Long Lost Cause

No browser has ever required designers to strictly conform to a standard, starting with the venerable Mosaic 1.0 way back in 1993. Developers have always been able to create web pages riddled with errors and inconsistencies, and the browsers have heroically unscrambled the mess. This has only escalated with time. Virtually every web page has non-compliant junk hiding in the code that nevertheless looks acceptable when viewed in a browser.

This may sound like a sloppy design, but the lax attitude of browsers probably fueled the explosive growth of the web. Every other form of computer instruction is completely unforgiving---leave off just one little parenthesis in an otherwise flawless program in, say, C or Java, and the application will refuse to budge. Sprinkle random characters throughout an HTML-based webpage, and incredibly, the browser will still produce about the same result. This makes it easy to be dangerous.

Serenity Now

To stop the insanity induced by fighting browser quirks, the community has adopted a simple war cry: adhere to standards. The theory is that if all browsers operate identically under defined circumstances, everyone wins. The standard response is that standards stifle innovation, and without innovation there is no reason to compete. No one would make a browser if it had to be boring.

There remains one far more devastating hole in the theory, which is rarely discussed. The web has succeeded in large part because browsers do not follow standards. You can get away with sloppy code. Anyone, not just those with extreme patience or the mindset for exact syntax, can put up a site on the web. Browsers that accept non-standard code form the basis for a web that includes non-technical people.

Back to the Acid Test

And so Internet Explorer 8 passes the obscure Acid2 test, which is tantamount to showing that your new car can blast the radio and lower just the rear windows while driving at 5 MPH in reverse over rough terrain at an elevation 15,000 feet. All good things, but so what? Don't we really want to know what this car does that the competition doesn't do?

Likewise, the next version of whatever browser you like will do a better job meeting the standards, pleasing web development zealots around the world. It will also support the billions of pages written in poor, non-compliant, but usable HTML. It will also offer unique, flashy features, which will inspire vendor lock-in, which will reignite the rally for web standards, starting the whole sad cycle all over again.

Further Reading:

• The Web Standards Project
• Wikipedia on the Browser Wars
• Peter-Paul Koch on the history of browsers

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