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The Web Standards Project’s Acid3 Test

Acid3 is one test some people use to measure a Web browser platform's compliance with some Web standards.

Here’s how the second release of Internet Explorer Platform Preview scores:

Acid 3 Score
  • Why does the second Platform Preview seem to render Acid3 further from the reference image than the first Platform Preview?
  • On April 2nd, the Acid3 test changed. The change doesn’t add new tests, but instead of showing ‘LINKTEST FAILED’ under the score, the test now shows ‘YOU SHOULD NOT SEE THIS AT ALL’ in the upper left corner. The change also reordered script so Acid3 now checks for failure prior to removing an iframe during test 80. Internet Explorer fails the test, so the script to remove the iframe never runs and leaves the empty white box in the middle of the page. As we said at MIX10, we will continue to build standards support into the IE9 platform and as a byproduct our ACID3 score will increase.

These are the second Internet Explorer Platform Preview’s detailed results (hold the shift key and click the letter A in Acid3 on the test results page):

Failed 32 of 100 tests.
Test 00 failed: expected 'pre-wrap' but got 'normal' - found unexpected computed style
Test 01 failed: method [object NodeIterator].nextNode() didn't forward exception
Test 04 failed: expected 'null' but got '[object HTMLIFrameElement]' - expectation 21 failed
Test 05 failed: expected '3' but got '1' - expectation 7 failed
Test 08 failed: not a RangeException
Test 10 failed: expected 'result' but got '' - toString() didn't work for attribute node
Test 11 failed: when inserting <a> into Document with another child: no exception raised
Test 15 failed: privilege escalation security bug: text file ran script
Test 16 failed: Unexpected call to method or property access.
Test 17 failed: hasAttribute failure for 'method' on form
Test 19 failed: expected '11' but got 'undefined' - document DOCUMENT_FRAGMENT_NODE constant missing or wrong
Test 20 failed: null in getElementById() probably terminated string
Test 22 failed: expected '5' but got 'undefined' - wrong exception for createElement('<div>')
Test 23 failed: expected '5' but got 'undefined' - wrong exception for createElementNS('null', '<div>')
Test 25 failed: failed to raise exception
Test 26 passed, but took 703ms (less than 30fps)
Test 29 failed: expected '2' but got '1' - cloned table had wrong number of children
Test 33 failed: expected '1' but got '0' - failure 7
Test 38 failed: Object expected
Test 47 failed: expected 'auto' but got 'bogus' - control failed
Test 60 failed: attribute not specified after removal
Test 64 failed: expected '1' but got '0' - object is missing its only child
Test 67 failed: when calling removeNamedItemNS in a non existent attribute: wrong exception raised
Test 69 failed: timeout -- could be a networking issue
Test 71 failed: expected '1' but got '2' - wrong number of children in HEAD (first test)
Test 74 failed: getSVGDocument missing on <iframe> element.
Test 75 failed: expected '1' but got 'undefined' - Incorrect SVGLength.SVG_LENGTHTYPE_NUMBER constant value.
Test 76 failed: expected '0' but got '100' - Incorrect animVal value after svg animation.
Test 77 failed: SVGTextContentElement.getNumberOfChars() not supported.
Test 78 failed: Object expected
Test 79 failed: Object expected
Test 80 failed: linktest link couldn't be found
Test 98 failed: expected 'Sparrow' but got '' - document.title did not update dynamically
Total elapsed time: 9.65s

Click here for results from the first Platform Preview.


While not a comprehensive test suite for any Web standard, here's a list of Web standards Acid3 uses, grouped by their status as of May 5th, 2010:

  • Recommendations (or equivalent for the relevant standards body)
    • DOM Level 2 Traversal and Range
    • DOM Level 3 Core
    • DOM Level 2 Events
    • DOM Level 2 Style
    • DOM Level 2 HTML
    • DOM Level 2 Views
    • ECMAScript 3
    • HTTP 1.1
    • Unicode 5.0 UTF-16
    • Unicode 5.0 UTF-8
    • HTML 4.01
    • SVG 1.1
    • SMIL 2.1
    • Data URI scheme
    • XHTML 1.0
  • Proposed Recommendations:
    • CSS3 Selectors
  • Candidate Recommendations:
    • CSS3 Media Queries
    • CSS3 Basic User Interface Module
  • Working Drafts:
    • HTML5

Click to run the Acid3 test right now in an iframe below. (There’s a pause when the score gets to 47 but the test will continue after a few seconds.)

Run the Acid3 test in your default browser.