Acid 3: The Race Continues
Thursday, March 6th, 2008The Acid 3 web standards-compliance test has been up for a while now, and there’s no release-quality browser in existence yet that fully succeeds at the test.
Let me explain what these results are telling us before I show them. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops standards for Internet applications. For example, XHTML, HTML, CSS, etc. Acid 3 basically takes a lot of W3C’s newer standards and tests to be sure that the browser supports the features it should and that it behaves as it should when using them. Acid 3 is a collection of 100 different test suites to be sure that these standards are being met. So when I say that browser X gets a score of 55%, this means that browser X passed 55 of the 100 test suites.
Updated August 28, 2008. Decided it was time for an update. Outdated entries are italicized and grayed. New entries are not italicized. It’s a work in progress, and it may be a while before I have all the entries updated. It’s worth noting that Safari 4’s public beta passes Acid 3 without breaking a sweat. Safari 4.0 may well be the first release-quality browser to pass Acid 3!
Updated September 7, 2008. Added Google Chrome to the list.
These results are public domain, but I would very much appreciate a link back to this page if you copy this table somewhere else. I will keep updating this table as the race continues, and if everyone copies my table, they’ll have to maintain theirs as well. Mine’s not going anywhere, just link to it. 
| Beta Browsers | |||
| Browser | Version | Operating System | Acid 3 Score |
 Safari |
4.0 Beta (5528.1) | Mac OS X 10.5.4 | 100% (0.47s) |
| Safari |
WebKit Nightly (r35973) | Mac OS X 10.5.4 | 100% (0.47s) |
 Opera |
9.0 Beta (build 636) “WinGogi” | Windows Vista 32-bit | 100% (1.31s) |
 Seamonkey |
2.0a1pre nightly (2008082800) | Mac OS X 10.5.4 | 85% |
 Firefox |
3.1a2pre nightly (2008082802) | Mac OS X 10.5.4 | 84% |
 Google Chrome |
0.2.149.29 | Windows Vista 32-bit | 79% |
| Opera |
9.50 Beta (build 9864) | Windows XP Service Pack 2 | 79% |
 Camino |
2.0a1pre nightly (2008082800) | Mac OS X 10.5.4 | 71% |
 Flock |
2.0b3pre (2008081203) | Mac OS X 10.5.4 | 71% |
| Firefox |
3.0b4 (2008030317) | Mac OS X 10.5.2 | 68% |
| Firefox |
3.0b4 (2008030714) | Windows XP Service Pack 2 | 68% |
| Firefox |
3.0b4 (2008030714) | Windows Vista (32-bit) | 68% |
 Internet Explorer |
8.0.6001.17184 (Beta) | Windows Vista (32-bit) | 18% |
| Internet Explorer |
8.0.6001.17184 (Beta) | Windows XP Service Pack 2 | 18% |
| Released Browsers | |||
| Browser | Version | Operating System | Acid 3 Score |
| Safari |
3.1.2 (5525.20.1) * | Mac OS X 10.5.4 | 75% |
| Safari |
3.1.2 (525.21) * | Windows Vista (32-bit) | 75% |
| Firefox |
3.0.1 (2008070206) | Mac OS X 10.5.4 | 71% |
 Konqueror |
4.0.3 | Linux | 65% |
 Epiphany |
2.22 | Ubuntu 8.04 (beta) | 59% |
| Camino |
1.6.3 | Mac OS X 10.5.4 | 53% |
| SeaMonkey |
1.1.11 | Mac OS X 10.5.4 | 53% |
| Flock |
1.2.5 | Mac OS X 10.5.4 | 53% |
| Epiphany |
2.20.3 | Gentoo Linux | 51% |
| Konqueror |
3.5.9 | Gentoo Linux | 51% |
| Opera |
9.26 | Mac OS X 10.5.2 | 46% |
| Opera |
9.26 | Windows Vista (32-bit) | 46% |
| Safari |
3.0.4 (5523.15) * | Mac OS X 10.5.2 | 39% |
| Safari |
3.0.4 (523.15) * | Windows XP Service Pack 2 | 39% |
| Safari |
3.0.4 (523.15) * | Windows Vista (32-bit) | 39% |
 Mobile Safari |
3.0 (420.1) | iPhone | 39% |
 Internet Explorer |
5.50.4807.2300 (SP2) | Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Multiple IE) |
14% |
| Internet Explorer |
5.50.4134.0600 | Windows ME | 14% |
| Internet Explorer |
5.50.4807.2300 (SP2) | Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 | 13% |
 Internet Explorer |
7.0.5730.13 | Windows XP Service Pack 2 | 12% |
| Internet Explorer |
7.0.6000.16609 | Windows Vista (32-bit) | 12% |
 Internet Explorer |
6.0 | Windows XP Service Pack 2 | 12% |
| Internet Explorer |
6.0 | Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 | 11% |
|
* I don’t know whether Apple meant to put 5xx or 5xxx. I highly doubt that they intended to use such an inconsistent versioning scheme, but I’m going to cite here whatever they put on the About window. Thanks to Mark Rowe from Apple for explaining this: “The leading digit of the build number signifies the platform version. 45xx.y.z is Tiger (10.4), 55xx.y.z is Leopard (10.5), and 5xx.y.z is Windows.” |
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I guess it really comes as no surprise that Internet Explorer is currently in last place. But really, how did Internet Explorer 7 and 6 do worse than v5.5?
Note: If you want to see another browser in this listing, let me know and I will try my best to test and add it here. Please include the browser’s name, a screenshot of the result and about window.