Early this morning I read that there is an internal build of IE8 that supposedly renders the Acid2 test perfectly.  When hearing about this, I'm sure there were crowds of naive developers rejoicing and singing praise.  That's great, but I'm not one of them.  The reason is simple: CSS is only one standard.

Passing the Acid2 test brings a great deal of weight of the reliability of a web browser, but as an AJAX specialist, my core technologies are the DOM and JavaScript.  This is why I could use Firefox 1.5 and 2.0 even though they were only somewhat close to passing the ACID2 test (though this didn't stop me writing writing Mozilla a letter or two!)

People seem to forget that JavaScript is also a standard (by ECMA-International, who also has C#-- ironic?)  Furthermore, the DOM is a standard.  I can easily deal with strange stuff going on in CSS by using more images in place of text or by using IE conditional CSS (a feature the other browsers need).  It's just one of the many standards required to be a proper web browser.  Honestly, I can even deal with their weak implementation of JavaScript, because it handles closures, namespaces, and higher-order functions fine.

The problem I hit... every... single... day... however, is their lack of strong DOM support.  There are just SO few things you can do with the DOM in IE!  I don't even mean the awesome stuff like being able to access a mouse selection is a safe way, but something simple and common like being able to use addEventListener instead of attachEvent.  Even the Silverlight team thought it was important to add support for that (in their first release too!)

In addition to the DOM, I should also mention that this is not the end of the standards list.  Firefox, Opera, and Safari all take HTML5, Canvases (part of HTML5), and SVG for granted.  IE has absolutely no support for these standards.  I'm sure more avid standards specialists could go on and on, listing even more standards that IE lacks and that others have had for a while.  We just can't forget about the other technologies.  We only complain about CSS because it's partially supported and therefore it reminds people of its sloppiness in IE, prompting us to talk about it.  Since we haven't seen them in IE, most don't consider than as important, but if we had them in IE, then we wouldn't have to complain so much about the CSS support.  We would have more standards-based visual technologies to help us get to the same end.

Lastly, I would like to mention again that "standard" not only means "common, same, or basis for comparison", but it also refers to a certain level of quality.  So, even if the IE team were to pass the Acid2 test, support JavaScript 1.5+, and add support for the addEventListener function, they would have to continually and consistently prove their integrity by releasing a major update either annually or bi-annually to keep up with the technologies.  It's very important to keep changing with technology and to keep going with the flow.  IE's lack of proper web technology support has held web technology back for way too long.

I don't think most people realize how significance of a technological boost Firefox 1.0 was when it first came on the scene!  It wasn't just a new browser or some neat piece of technology.  It was like someone dropped a Lexus LS 2008 into a local car in 1991.  It shouldn't have been that way though.  The IE team had the most power and with that power came the responsibility to lead the charge.  They failed.  To this day, the Firefox and Opera guys are very hard working people who are constantly putting out new updates and therefore are constantly proving that even though they aren't perfect, they are willing to stay with the times and provide regular updates.  The IE team has to prove themselves in the same way and I'm confident that myself and my fellow web developers will completely accept IE when it becomes a proper web browser.

Therefore, I'm not too excited about IE8 passing the Acid2 test; I was much more excited when Opera did.  It's awesome that they finally got that far, but the IE team has a TON of things that must be done before IE can start playing with the big boys again.  Personally, I think they should just do what Apple did with OS9 and just rewrite the entire thing from scratch.  I also think they should recreate the IE team with some of the best of the best from other portions of Microsoft.  The web browser is arguably the most used application on a PC today and it is therefore worthy of our best resources.  Microsoft could even rewrite the entire thing in .NET to prove to the world the amazing power and efficiency of .NET and feed two birds with one scone!

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