Final Chapter – Firefox 2 (Gecko) & Conclusions
Published by: Codrut Nistor, in SoftDistrict Series
February24th2008
Today, we arrive to the final destination of our web compliance mini-series, and the topic is Firefox, or Mozilla's Gecko engine, to be more accurate. Since Mozilla or Firefox don't need any additional presentation, let's get right into battle, so we can draw the conclusions at the end, shall we?
As you can see above, Firefox failed the old Acid2 test, to my amazement. On this field, it seems Opera is the leader, being the only browser in my little test to pass this old HTML/CSS compliance test!
Just as a side note, be aware that Safari 2.02 also managed to pass this test, being also the first one to do that, back on the 31st of October, 2005. I didn't include the Windows version in my tests, simply because its market share is tiny at this time, and I didn't have a Mac at my disposal to try the one built for Mac OS X...
Next, in the Acid3 test, Mozilla's Gecko engine got a slightly better result than Opera, reaching 50/100. Anyway, there's still a looong way until full compliance is reached...
Testing with other browsers that use the Gecko engine, such as Flock or K-Ninja, didn't bring any surprises, because the results were exactly the same as those in Firefox, so let's move on and draw the conclusions, shall we?
When talking about the older Acid2 test, only Opera managed to display the correct image. Internet Explorer 7 and browsers that use its rendering engine displayed simply a mess, while Firefox 2 got almost there, but didn't manage to pull it off and display an accurate test image.
At last, the Acid3 test was a very tough one for all three main rendering engines that rule the browsers market, the final score being 12(Trident/Internet Explorer) - 46(Presto/Opera) - 50(Gecko/Firefox), and since Trident is only compatible with Windows, at this time, while Presto and Gecko are working well on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BSD and Unix, Internet Explorer may just go down the drain, if Microsoft doesn't do something about it!
Finally, just remember to subscribe to our RSS feed, because we'll have such series in the future too, so best way to find out about them in time is to receive our news in your email. Of course, you can be sure we won't give away your address to any third parties, or send you any spam messages!
As you can see above, Firefox failed the old Acid2 test, to my amazement. On this field, it seems Opera is the leader, being the only browser in my little test to pass this old HTML/CSS compliance test!
Just as a side note, be aware that Safari 2.02 also managed to pass this test, being also the first one to do that, back on the 31st of October, 2005. I didn't include the Windows version in my tests, simply because its market share is tiny at this time, and I didn't have a Mac at my disposal to try the one built for Mac OS X...
Next, in the Acid3 test, Mozilla's Gecko engine got a slightly better result than Opera, reaching 50/100. Anyway, there's still a looong way until full compliance is reached...
Testing with other browsers that use the Gecko engine, such as Flock or K-Ninja, didn't bring any surprises, because the results were exactly the same as those in Firefox, so let's move on and draw the conclusions, shall we?
When talking about the older Acid2 test, only Opera managed to display the correct image. Internet Explorer 7 and browsers that use its rendering engine displayed simply a mess, while Firefox 2 got almost there, but didn't manage to pull it off and display an accurate test image.
At last, the Acid3 test was a very tough one for all three main rendering engines that rule the browsers market, the final score being 12(Trident/Internet Explorer) - 46(Presto/Opera) - 50(Gecko/Firefox), and since Trident is only compatible with Windows, at this time, while Presto and Gecko are working well on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BSD and Unix, Internet Explorer may just go down the drain, if Microsoft doesn't do something about it!
Finally, just remember to subscribe to our RSS feed, because we'll have such series in the future too, so best way to find out about them in time is to receive our news in your email. Of course, you can be sure we won't give away your address to any third parties, or send you any spam messages!
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2 Comments on Final Chapter – Firefox 2 (Gecko) & Conclusions
On 02/25/2008 at 11:06 am Gen Kanai said:
Thank you for your review of browsers. It's always good for people to know that there are choices for browsers as many people don't know that they have a choice.
Just for your reference, Firefox 3 will pass the Acid 2 test successfully (the beta versions that are available for testing now all pass Acid 2.) Firefox 3 Betas do better than Firefox 2 on Acid 3 but we should not expect full compliance with Acid 3 soon.
One review of Acid 3 tests is done here by John Resig:
http://ejohn.org/blog/acid3-tackles-ecmascript/
On 02/26/2008 at 7:16 pm Codrut Nistor said:
Thank you for your comment. I was aware of the fact that Firefox 3 passes Acid 2, while Opera 9.5 Beta also gets a better score, but I want to wait for the final releases.
This year promises to be a very interesting one, with Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, and maybe even Internet Explorer 8, if Microsoft manages to make it much better than rumored, in terms of compatibility...
In the meantime, if you have any interesting news for us regarding Firefox or any other Mozilla project, please don't hesitate to contact us, it's going to be a pleasure to tell everyone about it!
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