The WaSP group has released the Acid2 test, and it seems that every major graphical browser fails it pretty badly. The first Acid test was made during the first browser wars, and was a challenge for the major competing browsers to get up to date on standards support. The original Acid test (which was testing CSS 1 support) was very successful in its purpose, and soon Netscape and Internet Explorer (the major contendors at the time) rendered the Acid test correctly. Now the second browser wars have begun, and the Acid2 test has emerged. What this test is is a page that uses a combination of purposefully complicated code to display something, and it is designed so that it will look terrible if the browser handles any of the features involved even slightly incorrectly.

This isn't just any demonstration of standards incompliance. The Acid2 test is a serious challenge, and there will certainly be a race of the major browsers to see who can be the first to properly support everything involved. At the moment, no major browser can pull it off. I personally tested it with Firefox 1.0, Internet Explorer 6, Opera 8 beta 3, Konqueror 3.4.0, and Amaya 9.1 for the heck of it. Amaya was by far the worst. Internet Explorer was next and also rendered nothing that looked that what it was supposed to be. Konqueror was next, and it produced something that looked like the target rendering, but it was still pretty screwed up. Then were Opera and Firefox, and I'd say that Firefox is very slightly closer to the target rendering than Opera is. But still, every browser choked on at least a few things.

So now the race is on. Who will be the first to pass the Acid2 test? It looks like Firefox and Opera have the best chance, with Konqueror not far behind. Internet Explorer, at the moment, is looking like a pretty lost cause. It's kind of sad, because, if my memory serves correctly, Internet Explorer was the first major browser to pass the first Acid test. Their laziness in the last five years has left them miles behind. It's the classic tale of the tortoise and the hare. Hopefully Microsoft will finally wake up from its nap and get back in the race.

Microsoft is supposed to be making Internet Explorer 7.0. But Winsupersite claims it will mostly be for bug fixing and adding tabbed browsing. Considering they are just now adding tabbed browsing I see it highly unlikely that they will get this working first.