Just as Roger states, it’s a mix of how it’s communicated together with what actually meets the term of passing the test. I’d say that a 100/100 constitutes passing, with the note of smooth animations etc to pass it in a good manner.

Post is updated with a mention to your comment.

Look at my comments on 456bereastreet for more about this or read the article on Wikipedia. Roger updated his blog post, may I ask you to do the same?

Well, given the upcoming changes with Gecko, I agree with you. For now.

While I generally agree with the sentiment, last time with just one web browser dominated everything, it was closed-source. For it to work, it has to be open-source.

Waiting to Firefox 4 is, to me, not an option.

It might just have to be. Between FF3 and 4, Gecko will be moving on to version 2, which brings some massive architectural changes with it.

I won’t pretend to fully understand what they are, but adding major new features (@fontface, SMIL, etc) when the codebase beneath them is about to change wildly doesn’t seem like the best move to me.

On your other point, I’m glad MS won’t be buying in another engine, and that all the browser vendors aren’t concentrating on one engine. Look what happened last time there was only one engine dominating the entire market! Competition is a good thing.

I thought I’d give my replies to the questions I asked:

1. I think they should release Firefox 3 soon, but then, as suggested above, fix as much Acid3 things as possible in the nightlies or in a follow-up release to Firefox 3. Waiting to Firefox 4 is, to me, not an option.

However, I do really think they should implement querySelectorAll as soon as they can, since it shouldn’t be too hard and at the same time extremely useful.

2. Microsoft has lots of economical as well as developer resources. Since the standard rendering in IE 8 will be based on a new layout engine, they really have no excuse for not delivering the best web browser in the market.

Why they don’t is about politics and management, not whether they’re able to or not. I’d love to see them using another rendering engine, like Gecko, or buy a web browser, like Opera. But that’s never gonna happen.

The problem is that the Acid3 test is a pretty arbitrary set of features from various different standards.

Personally I think the browser makers should fix one standard at a time and pass the Acid3 test when they support all the tested standards.

2. I don’t know what IE’s problem is. They have massive amounts of money at Microsoft, yet they can’t come close to keeping up with the small money businesses or non-profit org mozilla. Huh? Bad management there.

And until MS catches up (which we all hope will happen asap) there really no immediate rush besides the bragging rights.

Its good to see two browsers pass Acid3 so quickly so that’s heartening. Competition can be a good thing. But I wouldn’t sell Firefox short just yet. That being said I’ve drifted more towards Opera lately but doing what we do its a case of using them all for something every day.

I don’t think we should hold our breath for microsoft in the short term (maybe the longer term if Steve Ballmer had a vision and the organisation evangelised from the top down?) ha ha.

I’m being optimistic this year though, I sense that even MS are getting it within the organisation so you never know your luck. IE8 might just surprise us.

But today, right now, you’re exactly right. The Acid3 marks are exactly where they are. Kudos to Opera and Webkit on this one.

As for IE8, the team is making good strides forward. They will likely still be behind the other browsers at the time of release, but still, it’s progress. Maybe in a few years, IE6 will have a smaller user base and IE8 could be the baseline. Oh how good that would be!

Will Microsoft ever come close to catching up? And if not, what should they do to actually release a web browser that is at the forefront of web browser development?

With Microsoft attempting to buy Yahoo, and all the speculation regarding flight of developers into the open arms of competitors, I guess there would be similar speculations if Microsoft starts bidding on Opera as well.

As long as they’re (non-)competing in a market, where all the other players are moving forward in great strides, their slow development cycles will continue to hold them back, and will always keep them a few years behind.

In my mind, the last time MS had the lead, was between the launch of 5.5 up until the launch of 6.0. By the time 6.0 was released, competitors were already far ahead of them, and haven’t looked back since. Considering the age of the web, Microsofts browser has been lagging behind the others, for more than half it’s existance.

Considering the vast amount of money and effort that Microsoft has put into the Eolas case, I doubt they’re just going to roll over, and buy Opera or license another rendering engine… as much as I wish they would, I find it very unlikely.

But, back to the matter at hand.

In my mind, the only real way Microsoft can get back into the game, is to set the IE team free. Break them away from the big monolith and make them an entirely separate entity that report to no-one, and let them choose their own tools, development methods, team members, bug-tracking features, etc. There’s nothing wrong with owning a few succesful techonology companies

The funding of that company could then come from Microsoft, as well as others, licensing their products… and I suspect that it would also please the anti-trust gods … at least for awhile.

Hell, it might even mean that they could release quality browsers for more than one platform

Should Firefox wait with a release till it gets better Acid3 score, querySelectorAll support etc?

No, I think there are so many good things in Firefox 3, that it’s worthy of being released. It’ll put a fair amount of pressure on the competition to keep improving their browsers, and will benefit a lot of developers to have new and updated user-agents to fool around with.

Yes, Acid3 compliance with all it’s benefits would be useful, but let’s face it … we’re living without them today, we can wait a few months.

We can’t really wait for Firefox 4 for Acid 3 to pass and having support for things like the Selectors API.

What Microsoft should do is to buy Opera or something. There are really no benefits that I can think of for them to develop a new browser engine themself and since they have decided to stick with the IE 7 engine for all old pages - why not use one of the three good browser engines that exists today for any future browsers? They wouldat least certainly regain the trust of the web developers if they did…

Regarding Explorer, you are so right. Even when Microsoft tries to get ahead, they fall back to the last place again in a matter of months.

I really like seing Acid 3 compliance becoming a goal for the major browser vendors, since the technologies it tests is the core of the web applications of the future.

When they release FF3 they won’t be far behind current shipping versions of Opera or Safari, and they’ll be well ahead of IE. It looks like Opera won’t pass in the upcoming 9.5 either — in both cases Acid3 came just as they were approaching a release.

As for the IE team, they’re making massive strides forward. The idea of IE passing Acid2 was beyond our wildest dreams a short while ago.

IE8 probably won’t be the super-awesome thing we’re all hoping for, but hopefully the new engine will give them a solid foundation to build on. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find them catching and maybe even passing other browser vendors again in the next few years. Remember how good IE5 and 6 were compared to the competition at the time? Microsoft can be an absolute powerhouse when they’re on form.

During the current FX3 codefreezes, no new features will be added so I’m guessing no further improvements referring to Acid3 will be made.

That along with the fact that if Acid3 should become a priority for the FX3 release, a new extended testing process should be introduced (along with some other things) which will only push the release date back to September/October; Therefore making it not an option.