Most standards complaint browser


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I don't want to start a flame war, I want to know which browser is the most standards complaint that is avilable to public excluding internal builds, betas etc.

Thanks

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Just out of interest, does anyone know how many web sites are themselves standards compliant?

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I can name 3 or 4 off the top of my head :pinch:

W3C

Bobby

Section 508 (or is it 509 :blush: )

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Just to clear up a few misconceptions...

  • Amaya is NOT standards compliant. It "supports" a lot of standards but it doesn't really "comply" with any of them fully. CSS support sucks, for instance, and that is one of the most important standards to support - in my opinion.
  • The Acid2 test is not a full suite of tests designed to test the compliance with any particular standard. It only tests a very small subset of several standards - the most common rendering problems, to be specific. You should not use the Acid2 test as a "be all" solution for testing a browser's compliance with a particular standard. You can use it as a "this browser isn't effected by these particular bugs" test, nothing more.

With that out of the way, I think Opera is the most standards-compliant browser on Windows (it supports practically everything I have ever tried to do.) Gecko-based browsers come second (Firefox, Mozilla, K-Meleon, etc. do not support CSS list counters, the ability to position/float generated content, etc. and those are some of the most interesting features in CSS.) Trident-based browsers are at the very end of the line (Internet Explorer and others - they don't allow a LOT of things that the standard allows.)

I cannot really give any objective opinions on Linux or Mac browsers. I may dust off my Ark Linux CD and put Konqueror through some of my personal tests (CSS experiments that follow the standards very closely and do not cater for any browser) and see how it fairs. That may give me a good idea of how standards-compliant Safari is, as well, since their rendering engines are fairly similar.

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Gecko-based browsers come second (Firefox, Mozilla, K-Meleon, etc. do not support CSS list counters, the ability to position/float generated content, etc. and those are some of the most interesting features in CSS.)

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Uhm, I think you may want to reword this. I have a few sites that have floated stuff...that I primarily did in Firefox and it all works...

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Uhm, I think you may want to reword this. I have a few sites that have floated stuff...that I primarily did in Firefox and it all works...

It describes the problem perfectly. You seem to have missed the bit about "generated content," or simply don't understand what I mean by it.

li:before {
  position: relative;
  right: 120px;
  top: -2px;
}

By "generated content," I meant the ability to use CSS to create the :before and :after psuedo-elements, and Firefox cannot apply positioning to them (position or float rules.) Firefox supports the ability to position and float regular elements, but it cannot position/float the psuedo-elements.

That ability opens the door to many interesting effects: generated arrows, for submenu items in a drop-down menu system; interactive navigation hints, using the title='' attribute text on the anchors; and more. It is one of CSS' greatest features, in my honest opinion. It is a shame that Opera is the only browser, on Windows, that supports it.

I hope my comment makes more sense to you now :)

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It describes the problem perfectly. You seem to have missed the bit about "generated content," or simply don't understand what I mean by it.

li:before {
  position: relative;
  right: 120px;
  top: -2px;
}

By "generated content," I meant the ability to use CSS to create the :before and :after psuedo-elements, and Firefox cannot apply positioning to them (position or float rules.) Firefox supports the ability to position and float regular elements, but it cannot position/float the psuedo-elements.

That ability opens the door to many interesting effects: generated arrows, for submenu items in a drop-down menu system; interactive navigation hints, using the title='' attribute text on the anchors; and more. It is one of CSS' greatest features, in my honest opinion. It is a shame that Opera is the only browser, on Windows, that supports it.

I hope my comment makes more sense to you now :)

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Oh ok I see what you mean now. It just allows you to set stuff in "before" or "after" a tag. I think it would have been clearer if you would've said puesdo classes because

.ex {
 float: left;
 color: blue;
}

is generated ;)

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Oh ok I see what you mean now. It just allows you to set stuff in "before" or "after" a tag. I think it would have been clearer if you would've said puesdo classes because [snip] is generated

No, that's not generated. You are applying styles to already-existing objects that are within the document tree (DOM.) When you apply a :before or :after psuedo-element they are not a part of the document tree (DOM,) they are simply shown on the screen - they are "generated" content.

I think you will find the Generated content, automatic numbering, and lists portion of the CSS 2.1 specification interesting :)

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Standards compliance will always be a moving target as the W3C move things forward the browsers play catch up, so in some ways the question is meaningless if all one wants to do is be a browser x fanboy.

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Standards compliance isn't really a moving target. The standards do evolve but the evolutions usually aren't recommended for several years. I would hardly call CSS 2.1, XHTML 1.1, etc. moving targets, for example. The only browser that truly needs to catch-up is Internet Explorer (because the development team was working on the Windows Graphic Foundation for Windows Vista for the last few years), the others just need a few small tweaks.

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Safari / Konqueror

both jus passed the acid2

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Current version of Konqueror doesn't pass it, but the 3.5 alpha comes very close.

When 3.5 is final it will pass. The 4.0 branch already passes so it's being back ported to 3.5.

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hmm, as already said, i would have to go with opera..

when im site-designing, in css and xhtml, i always design for opera, and fix for ff/ie/etc .. so my main "style.css" or what have you works 100% in opera, then i just have "ie-fixes.css" and "ff-fixes.css" as nescessary, and etc, with all needed "hacks" and fixes

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