Regular listeners to the NeowinCAST podcasts will know I get more than a little passionate about web development, and a surprise announcement by Opera today at having scored 100/100 in the Acid3 test has caused more than a few heads to turn.
Acid3 is a test page from the Web Standards Project designed to check the compliance of a web browser to various DOM and javascript standards. Different browser manufacturers place varying amounts of importance on passing the tests in their nightly builds, but today Opera announced they have passed the full compliment of tests for the first time.
Previously the race had been expected to be won by WebKit, the rendering engine behind Safari with a current score of 98%; on the Surfin" Safari blog, daily updates of the edge towards passing each test had been given much to the anticipation of web developers.
It should be noted, however, that Opera"s announcement has not been verified by the wider community as their preview build is not available for testing. Conversely, nightly builds of WebKit are freely downloadable for developers to test at their leisure.
Nightly builds of Firefox currently score 71%, while Internet Explorer 8 beta trails behind with 18% compliance.